Most effective way to treat Lung Cancer

A new study conducted by the Jonsson Comprehensive Cancer Center at UCLA, which enrolled over 1,000 people who had PD-L1-expressing non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC), the most common type of lung cancer, appears to show that cancer immunotherapies are far superior to chemotherapy when it comes to treating lung cancer. In UCLA's study about two-thirds of the patients enrolled tested positive for PDL1-expressing tumors. All patients, regardless of PD-L1 expression, were randomly assigned into three groups: two who received differing doses of Merck's Keytruda, and one who got chemotherapy. As a whole, the results showed that patients receiving Keytruda were considerably more likely to have their tumors shrink significantly compared to the chemotherapy group. Additionally, patients receiving Keytruda also lived significantly longer than those who received chemotherapy. Patients on Keytruda also had less incidence of treatment toxicity than the chemotherapy cohort. Cancer immunotherapies have demonstrated remarkable responses in a number of different cancer types, lending hope that new treatments may be on the way.