Is Adjuvant Atezolizumab a New Standard in Stage II/IIIA Lung Cancer?

This transcript has been edited for clarity.

It's Mark Kris from Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center. I'm speaking today about a recent publication in The Lancet in the September 20, 2021, issue.

This paper details a worldwide randomized phase 3 trial comparing atezolizumab, the anti–PD-L1 drug, with no additional therapy in patients with completely resected stage II and stage IIIA lung cancers who have received postoperative chemotherapy with cisplatin and another agent.

Cisplatin-based chemotherapy after surgery in these patients is our current standard of care. This trial is a fairly clean one to address this very pertinent issue. What I like about this trial and this approach, particularly from a medical oncologist standpoint, is that the goal is to improve the cure rate.

We have the potential here to take one of our systemic agents and use it in a situation that could enhance the chance of cure. I know there is some controversy here, but to me, what's more important is the disease-free survival curve. Only those patients who get on that curve and stay on that curve can be cured. The disease-free survival curve is indeed the most important one because, to me, that's the cure curve.

This trial was designed to compare no additional treatment with 16 doses of