Philadelphia – at the 2015 annual meeting of the American Association for Cancer Research (AACR), new data was presented that showed checkpoint inhibitors have a greater effect when they work in combination, they may also offer a new effective treatment option in Triple Negative Breast Cancer (TNBC).

Are two checkpoints are better than one?

At AACR 2015, F. Stephen Hodi MD (Dana-Farber Cancer Institute) presented results, published simultaneously in the New England Journal of Medicine, that showed in advanced melanoma, combining two checkpoint inhibitors (nivolumab and ipilimumab) showed better results than with one alone (ipilumumab). The authors in their NEJM paper conclude:

The objective-response rate and the progression-free survival among patients with advanced melanoma who had not previously received treatment were significantly greater with nivolumab combined with ipilimumab than with ipilimumab monotherapy. Combination therapy had an acceptable safety profile.

What is the potential for checkpoint inhibition in TNBC?

Yesterday at AACR, Leisha S. Emens MD, PhD (Johns Hopkins) presented the results in TNBC from a phase 1 trial of MPDL3280A (Roche/Genentech), a checkpoint inhibitor that targets the PD-L1/PD-1 signaling pathway.

The only currently available treatment for TNBC is chemotherapy, but sadly patients often do not live long, and rapidly progress. Progression-free survival (PFS) is estimated to be around 4 months in TNBC. This means there is a real unmet medical need for effective new treatments. The fact that cancer immunotherapy, and in particularly checkpoint inhibitors targeting the PD-L1/PD-1 signaling pathway may have potential in this disease is huge.

Cancer immunotherapy and in particular checkpoint inhibitors are a hot topic at AACR. In this post we look in more detail at the data presented.

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