Strategies for PD-L1 Testing and Targeted Therapy With Immune Checkpoint Inhibitors for NSCLC – Self Assessment

Hossein Borghaei, DO, MS

Dr Hossein Borghaei earned his degree at Philadelphia College of Osteopathic Medicine and completed a residency at Graduate Hospital in Philadelphia. Since completing his fellowship training at Fox Chase, he has been involved in a number of clinical trials aimed at developing new, antibody-based therapies and immunotherapies for patients with lung cancer.

In addition to his clinical practice and participation in immunotherapy-based clinical trials, Dr Borghaei is the principal investigator (PI) of a laboratory that develops new monoclonal antibodies and novel immune-modulating drugs, with the aim of bringing these approaches to the clinic. He served as the PI of a phase III randomized study that proved the effectiveness of nivolumab in the treatment of patients with advanced non-squamous non-small cell lung cancer after progression on prior chemotherapy. This work led to the approval of nivolumab, one of the first immunotherapy-based drugs to be approved for lung cancer in this setting.

Dr Borghaei is a member of the thoracic core committee at Eastern Cooperative Oncology Group (ECOG) and, until recently, was a member of the National Comprehensive Cancer Network (NCCN) Non-Small Cell Lung Cancer panel. He is a long-standing member of the American Society of Clinical Oncology (ASCO), the American Association for Cancer Research (AACR), the International Association for the Study of Lung Cancer (IASLC), the Society for Immunotherapy of Cancer (SITC), and the ECOG thoracic committee.

Dr. Borghaei has been a recipient of the Robert Krigel Memorial Award for Teaching Excellence from Fox Chase Cancer Center, ASCO’s Young Investigator Award, and an ASCO Career Development Award. His work has been published in The New England Journal of Medicine, Journal of Clinical Oncology, Lancet Oncology, Leukemia Research, Journal of Thoracic Oncology, Clinical Cancer Research, Clinical Lung Cancer, and Journal of the National Comprehensive Cancer Network.

Kurt A. Schalper, MD, PhD

Dr Kurt A. Schalper trained as a cell biologist, surgical pathologist, and served in clinical molecular diagnostics. In addition, during his postdoctoral work at Yale he focused on developing strategies to objectively and quantitatively measure key immunotherapy-related biomarkers in immune cells and cancer tissues. Most of this work has been performed in close collaboration with other Yale researchers and published in peer-reviewed journals. Recently, Dr Schalper was appointed to lead the Translational Immuno-Oncology Laboratory (T.I.L.) in the Yale Cancer Center, that aims to produce and support high quality translational research in immuno-oncology through standardized analyses of biomarkers and cross-integration with other Yale resources.

Dr Schalper’s research is focused on understanding the immunobiology of human solid tumors and developing molecular biomarkers for prediction of response or resistance to therapies. In particular, his group has been actively evaluating the role of specific tumor antigens and immune evasion pathways used by human lung malignancies including immune co-inhibitory/stimulatory ligands and receptors, tolerogenic enzymes, immune suppressive cells, antigen presenting/processing machinery, metabolic alterations in the tumor microenvironment, and oncogenic intracellular signaling. More recent and future scientific interests include the evaluation and clinical impact of tumor immune heterogeneity and editing.