Ivonescimab Trial Reports Survival Edge Over Standard Immunotherapy in Squamous Lung Cancer

Patients with advanced squamous non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) who lack a targetable driver mutation have long relied on immunotherapy-chemotherapy combinations as their standard first-line option. New phase 3 data suggest a next-generation agent may improve on that standard.

Ivonescimab is designed to block two pathways at once — PD-1, an immune checkpoint, and VEGF, a driver of abnormal blood vessel growth that tumors rely on. In the phase 3 HARMONi-6 trial, ivonescimab plus chemotherapy was compared against tislelizumab (a standard PD-1 checkpoint inhibitor) plus chemotherapy in patients with advanced squamous NSCLC. Reported median overall survival was 27.9 months in the ivonescimab arm versus 23.7 months in the tislelizumab arm.

Researchers noted that if the finding is confirmed in further analysis and additional studies, it could establish a new first-line option specifically for squamous NSCLC patients who do not have an actionable genomic target — a population that has had comparatively fewer treatment advances than non-squamous, biomarker-positive NSCLC in recent years.

Squamous cell carcinoma is one of the two major non-small cell lung cancer subtypes; you can read a plain-language explainer on how lung cancer subtypes are classified in our article library.