Clinical observation of the efficacy of PD-1/PD-L1 inhibitors in the treatment of patients with advanced solid tumors

Abstract

Introduction: Programmed death 1 (PD-1)/programmed death-ligand 1 (PD-L1) inhibitors are proved to be promising and are applied for the treatment of a variety of solid tumors. This retrospective study evaluated the efficacy of PD-1/PD-L1 inhibitors in patients with advanced solid tumors and explore the effect of clinical characteristics on it.

Materials and methods: From October 2017 to April 2020, a total of 90 patients from Capital Medical University Affiliated Beijing Friendship Hospital were enrolled.

Results: At a median follow-up of 10.55 months, objective response was observed in 23 patients and the objective response rate was 25.6%. The median progression-free survival (PFS) was 5.5 months (95% confidence interval [CI], 3.69-7.37). The 6m-PFS was 45.8% and 12m-PFS was 25.1%. The median overall survival (OS) was 16.9 months (95% CI, not reached [NR]-NR). The 12m-OS was 58.1% and 18m-OS was 48.1%.

Conclusion: The efficacy of PD-1/PD-L1 inhibitors in the treatment of advanced solid tumors was comparable to previous studies. ECOG performance status, smoking status, liver metastasis, neutrophil-to-lymphocyte ratio were independently correlated with PFS while liver metastasis and lactate dehydrogenase level were independently correlated with OS.

Keywords: PD-1/PD-L1 inhibitor; advanced solid tumor; clinical efficacy; efficacy prediction; immunotherapy.