The Association Between Chemotherapy Immediately Before Nivolumab and Outcomes Thereafter

We investigated whether the efficacy and type of pre-nivolumab chemotherapy influence outcomes in non-small cell lung cancer patients following nivolumab treatment.

In this multicenter study, 199 patients treated with nivolumab were retrospectively reviewed. We analyzed the relationships between the clinical response to nivolumab and to chemotherapy administered immediately beforehand.

Patients who achieved objective responses to pretreatments showed higher disease control rates with nivolumab than patients who did not (64% vs. 47%, p=0.03), as did those who achieved disease control with pretreatments (62% vs. 35%, p<0.001). Bevacizumab-pretreated patients tended to show better objective response rates with nivolumab (27% vs. 13%, p=0.06); the objective response rate to nivolumab was significantly higher in bevacizumab-pretreated patients who showed clinical responses (42% vs. 9.1%, p=0.02).

Achievement of a clinical response to chemotherapy immediately before nivolumab, particularly when combined with bevacizumab, increases the likelihood of disease control post-nivolumab.