Finding the Right Targets for Mesothelioma:

Mansfield wrote about the potential of immunotherapy as a future treatment of mesothelioma in an editorial published recently in the journal Lung Cancer.

He cited recent mesothelioma clinical trials that targeted the PD-1 and PD-L1 proteins that play a major role in preventing a patient’s immune system from recognizing and destroying certain tumor cells.

Approximately 40 percent of the mesothelioma cases studied express PD-L1 proteins, but almost all cases involve the sarcomatoid subtype.

Checkpoint inhibitor drugs essentially take the brakes off a patient’s immune system, allowing it to recognize the tumor cells and attack them effectively.

Pembrolizumab (Keytruda) and nivolumab (Opdivo) were among trial drugs showing remarkable effectiveness. The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) already approved both for treating non-small cell lung cancer, melanoma, renal cell carcinoma, urothelial carcinoma, and some head and neck cancers.

“The lung cancer data today supports the fact that these drugs are effective, but you can’t always make the leap that because they work for lung cancer, that they’ll work for mesothelioma,” Mansfield said. “That being said, patients with mesothelioma are responding.”