Brendon M. Stiles, MD, Discusses Low-Dose Radiation Therapy Along with Immunotherapy

Brendon M. Stiles, MD, discussed NewYork-Presbyterian Hospital’s trial testing of low dose radiation therapy along with immunotherapy prior to taking out the tumors in a neoadjuvant setting at the Annual New York Lung Cancers Symposium^®.

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Well I think just being at the meeting today, you can see that there’s so many moving parts; everything is really exciting. We’ve never had more tools to deal with lung cancer. I love the combination of all of these therapies. I think there’s a place to combine surgery with immunotherapy, I think surgery with targeted therapy, surgery with radiation therapy.

We at our institution have a trial where we give low dose radiation therapy along with immunotherapy prior to taking out the tumors in a neoadjuvant setting. We’re incredibly excited about that, and we’re seeing some amazing response results. And maybe the paradigm will shift a little bit as we go down the road, maybe we don’t need full dose radiation, full dose chemotherapy, while we’re really looking for immune-priming doses. It may be that lower doses prime the immune system just the same or perhaps even better. And then that leads to better responses down the road. That’s great too because it’s easier for patients to tolerate low dose radiation, low dose chemotherapy, and as long as we can get them safely through surgery that’s pretty exciting.