Combination of bevacizumab and dual immunotherapy for extensive-disease small-cell lung cancer: A case report

Abstract

Small-cell lung cancer (SCLC) is sensitive to chemoradiotherapy but remains to have a poor prognosis. In the immunotherapy era, chemotherapy combined with PD-L1 inhibitors has become a new first-line treatment option for advanced SCLC. The CheckMate 032 study combined a PD-1 blockade and a CTLA-4 inhibitor and found that this dual immunotherapy might be a positive treatment choice for SCLC. In our case, a patient with advanced SCLC received bevacizumab combined with dual immunotherapy over the third line with more than 12 months survival time. The overall survival time was 21.5 months from the start of the third-line treatment and 39 months from the time of extensive-disease SCLC diagnosis. The combination of a VEGF blockade and a dual immunotherapy in SCLC resulted in synergistic treatment effects. Therefore, bevacizumab might be a better adjuvant, either combined with chemotherapy or dual immunotherapy, for patients with persistent disease progression after undergoing immunotherapy.