Neoadjuvant and Adjuvant Immunotherapy: Opening New Horizons for Patients With Early-Stage Non-small Cell Lung Cancer

Abstract

Lung cancer is the most common malignant tumor with the highest mortality, and about 84% are non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC). However, only a small proportion of patients with newly diagnosed lung tumors can receive curative surgery and have a high risk of postoperative recurrence. At present, there are many perioperative treatment methods being continuously explored, such as chemotherapy and targeted therapy, continuously enriching the content of neoadjuvant and adjuvant therapy in early-stage NSCLC. But disappointingly, for patients with driver gene mutation, the significant disease-free survival (DFS) benefit of targeted drugs failed to translate into overall survival (OS) benefit, and for negative patients, chemotherapy has reached a plateau in improving efficacy and survival. Immunotherapy represented by immune checkpoint inhibitors (ICIs) has been researched in more and more clinical trials in patients with early-stage operable disease, gradually enriching the existing treatments. This review focuses on the research progress of clinical trials of neoadjuvant and adjuvant therapy with ICIs in early-stage NSCLC, the exploration of response evaluation and predictive biomarkers, and the urgent problems to be solved in the future.

Keywords: immune checkpoint inhibitor; neoadjuvant therapy; non-small cell lung cancer; predictive biomarker; response evaluation.