Promising Effectiveness of Combined Chemotherapy and Immunotherapy in Patients with Advanced Non-small Cell Lung Cancer: A Real-World Prospective Observational Study (CS-Lung-003)

This prospective observational study investigated the clinical status of patients with advanced non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) treated with cytotoxic chemotherapy+an immune checkpoint inhibitor (chemo + IO) as first-line treatment in a real-world setting. The cases of 98 patients treated with chemo + IO were prospectively collected and analyzed for effectiveness and safety. The response rate to chemo + IO was 46.9%, and the disease control rate was 76.5%. The median progression-free survival and overall survival (OS) in the total population were 5.2 and 22.3 months, respectively. The patients positive for PD-L1 (≥ 1%) showed significantly longer OS than the negative group (<1%) (median 26.7 vs. 18.7 months, p=0.04). Pre-existing interstitial lung disease (ILD) was associated with shorter OS than the absence of ILD (median 9.0 vs. 22.6 months, p<0.01). Immunerelated adverse events (irAEs) were observed in 28 patients (28.6%). The most frequent irAE was ILD (n=11); Grade 1 (n=1 patient), G2 (n=5), G3 (n=4), and only a single patient with a G5 irAE. In this CS-Lung-003 study, first-line chemo + IO in a real-world setting showed good effectiveness, comparable to that observed in international clinical trials. In real-world practice, chemo + IO is a promising and steadfast strategy.