De-escalation of chemoradiotherapy in stage III NSCLC

Immune checkpoint inhibition with durvalumab according to the PACIFIC regimen has been established as the gold standard for the treatment of unresectable stage III non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) in the absence of progression after platinum-based chemoradiotherapy ( RCT) and tumor PD- L1 expression ≥ is 1% [1–4]. However, in daily clinical practice, randomized controlled trials are sometimes not carried out simultaneously, but rather sequentially. The PACIFIC-6 study and other studies examined the tolerability and efficacy of a sequential RCT in patients who were not suitable for a simultaneous RCT for several reasons.