Trial reportJournal for immunotherapy of cancer2018
Which is the optimal immunotherapy for advanced squamous non-small-cell lung cancer in combination with chemotherapy: anti-PD-1 or anti-PD-L1?
Trial report in Journal for immunotherapy of cancer, 2018. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 43 papers, 7 of them syntheses that pooled it.
What it found
Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.
The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.
Who cites it
43 citing papers in PubMed, 7 syntheses or guidelines pooled it, 51 citations in OpenAlex.
- Navigating through the PD-1/PDL-1 Landscape: A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis of Clinical Outcomes in Hepatocellular Carcinoma and Their Influence on Immunotherapy and Tumor Microenvironment.International journal of molecular sciences · 2023Pooled it
- Pooled it
- The optimal immune checkpoint inhibitors combined with chemotherapy for advanced non-small-cell lung cancer: a systematic review and meta-analysis.Clinical & translational oncology : official publication of the Federation of Spanish Oncology Societies and of the National Cancer Institute of Mexico · 2021Pooled it
- Treatment- and immune-related adverse events of immune checkpoint inhibitors in advanced lung cancer.Bioscience reports · 2020Pooled it
- Use of Immunotherapy With Programmed Cell Death 1 vs Programmed Cell Death Ligand 1 Inhibitors in Patients With Cancer: A Systematic Review and Meta-analysis.JAMA oncology · 2020Pooled it
- Identifying optimal first-line interventions for advanced non-small cell lung carcinoma according to PD-L1 expression: a systematic review and network meta-analysis.Oncoimmunology · 2020Pooled it
- Rational application of the first-line chemotherapy and immune checkpoint inhibitors in advanced nonsmall cell lung cancer: A meta-analysis.Cancer medicine · 2019Pooled it
- Efficacy and safety comparisons of PD-1 versus PD-L1 inhibitors in patients with solid cancer: a systematic review and meta-analysis.Journal of the National Cancer Center · 2026Article
- The tumor microenvironment in lung cancer: Heterogeneity, therapeutic resistance and emerging treatment strategies (Review).International journal of oncology · 2026Review
- Identifying patients who benefit more from perioperative immunotherapy combinations for resectable non-small cell lung cancer based on clinical and molecular characteristics: a meta-analysis of randomized clinical trials.Clinical & translational oncology : official publication of the Federation of Spanish Oncology Societies and of the National Cancer Institute of Mexico · 2025Article
- Efficacy of the PD-1 inhibitor penpulimab in combination with chemotherapy for advanced lung squamous cell carcinoma: insights from a phase III multicenter study.Journal of thoracic disease · 2025Article
- New dimensions of PD-1/PD-L1 inhibitor combination therapy in cancer treatment: current advances and future perspectives.Frontiers in immunology · 2025Review
- Revolutionizing Cancer Treatment: Recent Advances in Immunotherapy.Biomedicines · 2024Review
- Review
- Chemotherapy-induced metastasis: molecular mechanisms and clinical therapies.Acta pharmacologica Sinica · 2023Review
- Triple negative breast cancer: approved treatment options and their mechanisms of action.Journal of cancer research and clinical oncology · 2023Article
- Anti-PD-(L)1 therapy of non-small cell lung cancer-A summary of clinical trials and current progresses.Heliyon · 2023Review
- Pharmacological tumor PDL1 depletion with chlorambucil treats ovarian cancer and melanoma: improves antitumor immunity and renders anti-PDL1-resistant tumors anti-PDL1-sensitive through NK cell effects.Journal for immunotherapy of cancer · 2023Article
- Efficacy and safety of pembrolizumab versus sintilimab treatment in patients with advanced squamous lung cancer: A real-world study in China.Frontiers in oncology · 2023Article
- Exosomal PD-L1 predicts response with immunotherapy in NSCLC patients.Clinical and experimental immunology · 2022Article
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
3 authors at 1 institution in 1 country.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
Recent randomized phase III trials (KEYNOTE-407 and IMpower131) reported that adding anti-programmed death (ligand) 1 (anti-PD-(L)1) antibodies in combination with taxane-platinum improve the therapeutic efficacy for advanced squamous non-small-cell lung cancer (NSCLC). However, there is no head-to-head comparison of pembrolizumab (anti-PD-1) plus chemotherapy vs. atezolizumab (anti-PD-L1) plus chemotherapy. Therefore, we performed an indirect comparison to explore the optimal choice of anti-PD-(L)1 treatment for advanced squamous NSCLC in combination with chemotherapy. The clinical outcomes were overall survival (OS), progression-free survival (PFS), objective response rate (ORR) and adverse event (AE). For overall patients, pembrolizumab had significantly superior OS (hazard ratio (HR) with 95% confidence interval, 0.67, 0.47-0.94; P = 0.02) and numerically better PFS (HR, 0.79, 0.60-1.04; P = 0.10) than atezolizumab, while they had similar ORR, all cause AE and grade 3-5 AE. For PD-L1 high patients, pembrolizumab and atezolizumab showed similar OS and PFS. However, for PD-L1 low/negative patients, pembrolizumab had superior OS (HR, 0.43, 0.24-0.76; P < 0.01/ HR, 0.74, 0.40-1.38; P = 0.35) and better PFS (HR, 0.80, 0.51-1.26; P = 0.33/ HR, 0.46, 0.28-0.75; P <0.01) than atezolizumab. Our analysis raises the hypothesis that anti-PD-1 antibody therapy in combination with chemotherapy may have superior efficacy compared to anti-PD-L1 antibody combination for patients with PD-L1 low/negative advanced squamous NSCLC.
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Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.