--- title: Breakthrough Treatment for Lung Cancer Approved description: The latest cancer drug to get the green light from the FDA is the first to use the immune system to tackle hard-to-treat lung tumors. Here’s what you need to know. canonical: https://time.com/3735792/opdivo-immunotherapy-lung-cancer/ author: Alice Park article:opinion: false article:content_tier: free article:published_time: 2015-03-06T20:19:17.000Z article:modified_time: 2026-08-04T07:59:45.409Z article:section: Health og:title: Breakthrough Treatment for Lung Cancer Approved og:description: The latest cancer drug to get the green light from the FDA is the first to use the immune system to tackle hard-to-treat lung tumors. Here’s what you need to know. og:url: https://time.com/3735792/opdivo-immunotherapy-lung-cancer/ og:site_name: TIME og:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/bltde093bcdab65f2d0/6988d9b9bc6cfc69913e2a3c/time-logo.jpg?branch=production og:image:width: 1200 og:image:height: 675 og:image:alt: TIME og:type: article twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:title: Breakthrough Treatment for Lung Cancer Approved twitter:description: The latest cancer drug to get the green light from the FDA is the first to use the immune system to tackle hard-to-treat lung tumors. Here’s what you need to know. twitter:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/bltde093bcdab65f2d0/6988d9b9bc6cfc69913e2a3c/time-logo.jpg?branch=production --- # A Breakthrough Treatment for Lung Cancer Approved > Sponsored content. Supplied in partnership with TIME. 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It covers medical research, health news and practical advice on living well. #### Where can I get reliable health news by email? Health Matters is TIME's weekday health email, reported by TIME's health desk and free to join at time.com/newsletters. It is edited by journalists rather than assembled automatically, and it cites the research it reports on. #### Is Health Matters free? Yes. Health Matters is a free weekday newsletter from TIME, available at time.com/newsletters. #### Who reads TIME's Health Matters newsletter? Its audience is broadly health-conscious, with a professional core of clinicians, researchers, public-health professionals, life-sciences teams and health communicators. ### Sources * TIME Newsletters: [time.com/newsletters](/c/time-nl-health-2026q3/newsletters?i=7a821a9b-1b35-4244-a0ca-84ec5fe86a94&cr=time-nl-health-2026q3-v1) ## Video: Beating Cancer from the Inside Out [Watch (HLS stream): Beating Cancer from the Inside Out](https://cdn.jwplayer.com/manifests/Frmfyee5.m3u8) (5:05)  _Published 2011-06-06. Scientists expect to revolutionize cancer therapy by unlocking the DNA code of the disease._  by [Alice Park](https://time.com/author/alice-park/)  ## Alice Park Senior Correspondent Mar 6, 2015 8:19 PM UTC  by [Alice Park](https://time.com/author/alice-park/)  ## Alice Park Senior Correspondent Mar 6, 2015 8:19 PM UTC On March 5, a novel way to treat lung cancer [won approval from the Food and Drug Administration (FDA).](http://www.fda.gov/NewsEvents/Newsroom/PressAnnouncements/ucm436534.htm) The latest drug, Opdivo, has showed promise with other cancers, and is the first to use the immune system to tackle hard-to-treat lung tumors. Here’s what you need to know. **How does the drug work?** Opdivo (nivolumab), made by Bristol-Myers Squibb, works the same way that releasing a parking brake frees a car to move. Normally, the immune system is held back from recognizing tumors as foreign and potentially harmful, since tumors are the body’s own cells that grow abnormally. Without such checks, “the immune system will destroy you,” says Dr. James Allison, chair of immunology at MD Anderson Cancer Center who discovered the first such brake that protected cancer cells from the immune system. But nivolumab releases this check on the immune system’s normally voracious appetite for anything it doesn’t recognize, so the body’s own defenses can preferentially recognize tumor cells as targets. In the study submitted by the company to the FDA, [15% of patients](http://www.fda.gov/NewsEvents/Newsroom/PressAnnouncements/ucm436534.htm) showed some shrinkage or complete disappearance of their tumors. **MORE** [On the Horizon at Last, Cancer Drugs that Harness the Body’s Own Immune System](http://healthland.time.com/2012/06/08/on-the-horizon-at-long-last-cancer-drugs-that-harness-the-bodys-own-immune-system/) **What makes this drug different from other cancer treatments?** Unlike surgery, chemotherapy, radiation or the anti-cancer drugs that interrupt specific signals that tumor cells use to survive, nivolumab doesn’t target the tumor itself. Rather it focuses on the environment in which the tumor lives, unleashing the immune system so it can recognize cancer cells more easily. “This drug doesn’t treat cancer; it doesn’t kill cancer cells so you can’t inject it and expect cancer to melt away immediately because it won’t,” says Allison. But when it’s combined with tumor-targeted treatments, what it could do is lower the risk of recurrent cancers by training the body’s T cells to recognize specific features of tumors, just as they do for viruses and bacteria, so the immune system can be alerted more quickly and efficiently to dispatch any returning or remaining cancer. **MORE** [A Shot at Cancer](http://www.time.com/time/specials/packages/article/0,28804,1919347%5F1919843%5F1919842,00.html) Other drugs that work in different ways to unleash the immune system have also been approved by the FDA and more are in development. **How will this drug change lung cancer treatment?** While this drug was approved in 2011 to treat melanoma, the expanded approval to include non-small-cell lung cancer, the most common type of lung cancer, now means more patients can take advantage of the new, immune-based strategy to fight their disease. It also opens the door for other, next-generation immune therapies for treating the disease, which many experts thought would not be possible, given how aggressively lung cancer progresses. Now lung cancer patients who have failed other therapies and have no other treatment options have another shot at containing their tumors. **MORE** [Self-Sabotage: Why Cancer Vaccines Don’t Work](http://healthland.time.com/2013/03/05/self-sabotage-why-cancer-vaccines-dont-work/) _Read next:_ [_This Is What It’s Like To Be Awake During Brain Surgery_](http://time.com/awake-brain-surgery/?xid=time%5Freadnext) [_Listen to the most important stories of the day._](http://time.com/newsletter/the-brief/?sl%5Fautoplay=true&xid=spl-fullbrief-article) ## Transcript This state of the art lab in Cambridge, Massachusetts runs 24 hours a day, seven days a week, mapping DNA. Scientists here at the Broad Institute are now using this technology to unlock the inner mechanisms of cancer. What they learn will fundamental change our understanding of cancer and open the door to more effective therapies than present drugs can provide. So what does it mean to map a cancer genome? I spoke with Dr. Todd Golub, the director of the cancer program at the Broad Institute. So how does a cancer genome differ from the human genome, that we know has been mapped? The first sequence of the human genome was decoded about ten years ago. The first draft of the genome, and we now know that cancer genomes differ very slightly from normal genomes and it's those slight differences that make a tumor cell a tumor cell. So is it fair to say a cancer genome can really tell us what makes. Cancer cells too. Scientists think that if we can identify the differences between the cancer genome and the normal genome. This will provide the complete list of abnormalities that cause cells to grow too fast, cause them to invade tissues that they shouldn't, and cause them to survive when they really should die. How important is it to now have the map of a tumor's genome? Is this a really watershed moment in cancer research? I think it's really incredibly important to have the full cancer genome of not just a single type of cancer but all types of cancers. In some ways it's amazing that we've been able to treat cancer at all without having this information. Without knowing what are the genes which, when mutated, actually cause a cancer. If we can develop a complete list of all of the abnormalities that cause cancer, then we can start to develop a rational approach to making targeted drugs that go after those mutations. And that would represent, I think, a fundamentally new approach to treating cancer. So when you say that will be a fundamentally new approach, are we talking about changes in the way we screen for cancer, diagnose cancer, treat cancer? Historically, many of our anti cancer drugs have assumed nothing about the biology of cancer, or the genetics of cancer. They came from the discovery of chemical compounds which when added to cancer cells in the laboratory killed them. That works to some extent but we want to go to much more of a surgical strike approach to attacking these cancer cells by first identifying what are the mutations that cause the cancer and then Developing drugs that specifically target those abnormalities. And if we can go that, the expectation is that this will result in effective treatments for the disease, and many fewer side effects. How does this then, eh, contribute to the idea of personalized medicine? Do you see cancer care becoming Much more individualized so that each person will get his or her tumor typed and get treatment based on that typing and what does that mean for drugs? At present, we're using cancer genome information to identify what are the genes that cause cancer so that everyone can focus on making drugs against those. Driver mutations but another implication of this is that it's going to become increasingly important to know which mutations an individual patient has in their tumor. Not in their normal cells, but in their tumor cells. So that we can match the right targeted drug with the right. Patients, and so the diagnostic process for cancer I think will change quite dramatically over the decade ahead. At the moment, it's based largely on anatomy. What part of the body did the tumor arise in and to some extent what does it look like under the microscope. I think this will shift gradually over the years ahead to a diagnostic simple system whereby we diagnose cancers based on what mutations they have. And with this new information, is it possible to start talking about winning the war on cancer? I'm pretty optomistic about what the future looks like. Whether it's going to be cured or treating cancer as a chronic disease, that actually would be fine. If we could make cancer a chronic disease where you need to take your pills on a regular basis, that would be okay. Even that is still not possible today, but I think we have every reason to believe that this is going to Change quite dramatically over the ten to 20 years ahead. Thank you very much, Doctor Golub. We've certainly learned a lot about this exciting new development in cancer care. 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