Keeping first-line responses going
For advanced non-small cell lung cancer without EGFR, ALK or ROS1 mutations, first-line treatment is immunotherapy plus platinum chemotherapy. It works for many patients — but the median time before the disease progresses again is typically eight to eleven months, and finding a way to extend it is one of the field's central problems.
Immunotherapy and drugs that block tumour blood-vessel growth can reinforce each other. A team led by Professor Shi Yuankai of the Cancer Hospital, Chinese Academy of Medical Sciences, tested that combination in a phase 3 trial, reported at the 2026 ASCO annual meeting in Chicago as a late-breaking abstract (LBA8507) — one of two late-breakers his team presented at this meeting.
What the trial did
Patients with previously untreated advanced non-squamous NSCLC without driver mutations were randomised to one of two sequences. Both began with four cycles of immunotherapy plus platinum-pemetrexed chemotherapy: the experimental arm used benmelstobart (an anti-PD-L1 antibody developed in China), the control arm tislelizumab, an approved anti-PD-1 antibody, followed by its standard maintenance. The difference came in maintenance, where the experimental arm added the oral antiangiogenic drug anlotinib to benmelstobart and pemetrexed, for up to two years.
Median progression-free survival was 14.42 months with the three-drug maintenance versus 8.34 months for the control regimen — a 33% reduction in the risk of progression or death (HR 0.67). The benefit was consistent across subgroups, including patients with PD-L1 expression below 1%. Responses lasted twelve months or more in 66% versus 51.3% of responders. Discontinuation rates were similar (6.7% vs 6.4%), with no new safety signals; the main severe side effects were blood-count effects, comparable between arms.
With under ten months of median follow-up, this is a progression-free survival result: overall survival data are not yet reported, and the reports reviewed do not disclose the randomised patient count. The trial was open-label. Whether the sequence becomes a new standard will depend on longer follow-up and regulatory review.
Why it matters
The trial's design point is practical rather than conceptual: don't change the induction patients already tolerate — strengthen the maintenance phase. Both benmelstobart and anlotinib are Chinese-developed drugs, and the study is part of a broader shift in which first-line lung cancer evidence increasingly originates in Chinese trials. This summary belongs to the Cancer & Tumors health area; it is research information, not advice for any individual's treatment.