Published by ESMO’s Daily Reporter, Elena Garralda’s latest On target column explores the promise of neoadjuvant immunotherapy in the treatment of cancer. Illustrative of these efforts, she briefly discusses results of the nonrandomized phase II NICHE-2 clinical, which initially headlined in 2022 at the ESMO Congress—with expanded cohort data now published in The New England Journal of Medicine, and results of the phase III randomized NADINA study which were presented at a plenary session during the 2024 ASCO Annual Meeting, May 31 – June 4 in Chicago.
While these two investigator-initiated trials point to a paradigm shift in the treatment of locally advanced mismatch repair deficient (dMMR) colon cancer and macroscopic stage III melanoma in the neoadjuvant setting, respectively, many pending questions still remain in order to unleash the potential of an array of emerging neo-adjuvant immunotherapies and related combinatorial approaches in an increasing number of tumor types. As highlighted by Elena, the successes of ongoing and future studies will continue to depend on the design of robust, rational and patient-centric studies, including many other important considerations such as the selection of appropriate endpoints as well as the intensification and de-escalation of (neo-) adjuvant regiments, to name but two.
To discover more, we invite you to read her latest column here. To browse all previous editions of On target, please click here.
Elena Garralda is Executive Director of VHIO’s Research Unit for Molecular Therapy of Cancer (UITM) – CaixaResearch, Head of our Early Clinical Drug Development Group, and co-Director of VHIO’s Clinical Research Program.
