A likely tori.

Immune checkpoint inhibition is making a move to the front lines for metastatic nasopharyngeal cancer. The JUPITER-02 trial, presented this week in abstract form, randomized 289 patients with metastatic and/or recurrent nasopharyngeal cancer with no prior chemo in this setting to gem/cis +/- concurrent and maintenance toripalimab, a novel anti-PD-1 agent. The primary endpoint of progression-free survival was increased by 50% from 8 to 12 months with the addition of toripalimab. This benefit held across PD-L1 statuses but was at the cost of significantly more grade 3+ toxicities. Overall survival analysis is not yet mature, though is currently trending towards a likely victory. Now, back to the drug you’ve probably never heard of: toripalimab. What makes tori stand out from its predecessors? Mainly that’s it’s the first of its kind to to hit the mainstream from a Chinese pharmaceutical company, TopAlliance. | Xu, ASCO 2021