Chemotherapy and programmed cell death protein 1/programmed death-ligand 1 inhibitor combinations for tyrosine kinase inhibitor-resistant, epidermal growth factor receptor-mutated non-small-cell lung cancer: a meta-analysis

Abstract

Background: The role of adding immune checkpoint inhibitors to chemotherapy in tyrosine kinase inhibitor (TKI)-resistant, epidermal growth factor receptor (EGFR)-mutant non-small-cell lung cancer (NSCLC) remains unknown. We carried out a meta-analysis to comprehensively assess the role of chemoimmunotherapy combinations, with and without vascular endothelial growth factor (VEGF) inhibition, in TKI-resistant, EGFR-mutant NSCLC.

Materials and methods: We systemically searched PubMed/MEDLINE and the proceedings of key annual meetings between 2018 and 2024 to identify randomized studies that evaluated chemoimmunotherapy combinations and included patients with EGFR-mutant NSCLC. Six randomized, phase III trials (CheckMate-722, KEYNOTE-789, ORIENT-31, IMpower150, IMpower151, and ATTLAS) were included in the meta-analysis. To compare progression-free survival (PFS) and overall survival (OS) outcomes, we extracted hazard ratio (HR) and 95% confidence interval (CI) for PFS and OS for EGFR-mutant subgroups from each study. We used the fixed effects model with inverse variance weighting to estimate the overall effect sizes for PFS and OS for chemoimmunotherapy combinations (with and without VEGF inhibitors) versus control arms.

Results: A total of 1772 patients with EGFR-mutant NSCLC were included. Adding programmed death-ligand 1 [PD-(L)1] inhibitors to chemotherapy significantly improved PFS (HR 0.77, 95% CI 0.67-0.88, P = 0.0002). This effect was greater when both PD-(L)1 and VEGF inhibition were utilized (PFS: HR 0.62, 95% CI 0.52-0.73, P < 0.0001). The pooled OS HR was 0.86 (95% CI 0.75-1.00, P = 0.0429) with the chemotherapy + PD-(L)1 combinations and 0.98 (95% CI 0.79-1.22, P = 0.8463) with dual PD-(L)1/VEGF inhibition.

Conclusions: Despite modest improvements in PFS, most pronounced when both PD-(L)1 and VEGF inhibitors are added to chemotherapy, neither strategy led to clinically meaningful improvements in OS. Our results do not support the broad use of chemoimmunotherapy combinations in TKI-resistant, EGFR-mutant lung cancer. Novel immunotherapy approaches are urgently needed for oncogene-driven NSCLC.

Keywords: EGFR; chemoimmunotherapy; immunotherapy; meta-analysis; non-small-cell lung cancer.