Moving Immunotherapy into Early-Stage Lung Cancer

Blockade of the programmed cell death 1 immune inhibitory pathway has revolutionized the treatment of advanced non-small cell lung cancer and led to significant improvements in overall survival. In contrast, early-stage surgically resectable lung cancer has had few treatment advances in many years and continues to be associated with a high risk of relapse despite apparent curative resection. In this review, we discuss the many ongoing efforts to incorporate programmed cell death 1 pathway blockade into the treatment paradigm for surgically resectable lung cancer both as adjuvant and neoadjuvant therapy. We review the early-phase results from neoadjuvant clinical trials, the landscape of phase III trials that are ongoing, and look to the future of immune checkpoint blockade as a potential curative therapy for surgically resectable lung cancer.