For nearly five decades, doctors have used various forms of immunotherapy to treat certain cancers. These treatments stimulate the patient’s own immune system to attack a disease, much like it would a virus or another foreign invader. Promising data have emerged to indicate its effectiveness against many cancers, including lung, kidney, melanoma, and some colon cancers.

Most recently, lung cancer has received attention for data released from a study published in The New England Journal of Medicine and featured in The New York Times. In the study, the immunotherapy drug pembrolizumab (Keytruda®) was combined with chemotherapy to determine whether the dual approach was more effective than chemotherapy alone for metastatic nonsquamous non-small cell lung cancer.

The results are encouraging: Patients who received the dual therapy lived longer than those who received only chemotherapy. In fact, the findings suggest that earlier introduction of immunotherapy for certain patients might one day become the standard treatment.

But while the data are promising, we must not be too eager to declare victory. Today’s immunotherapy is not a cure for late-stage lung cancer. However, it can give certain patients more precious time with family and friends. To provide that, we must carefully select patients who will benefit most and determine the most appropriate available treatment. Recent developments have focused on immune checkpoint inhibitors and on CAR T-cell therapy.