--- 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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Health Matters is TIME's daily 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 daily 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. ## 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) ```json [{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"NewsArticle","@id":"https://time.com/3735792/opdivo-immunotherapy-lung-cancer/","mainEntityOfPage":{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https://time.com/3735792/opdivo-immunotherapy-lung-cancer/"},"headline":"A Breakthrough Treatment for Lung Cancer Approved","datePublished":"2015-03-06T20:19:17.000Z","dateModified":"2026-08-04T07:59:45.409Z","description":"What you need to know about this promising new drug","url":"https://time.com/3735792/opdivo-immunotherapy-lung-cancer/","keywords":["Cancer","immune system","lung cancer"],"thumbnailUrl":"","author":[{"@type":"Person","name":"Alice Park","jobTitle":"Senior Correspondent","url":"https://time.com/author/alice-park/"}],"articleSection":"Health","image":[],"publisher":{"@type":"Organization","name":"Time","url":"https://time.com/","logo":{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://time.com/images/logo.png","width":528,"height":156},"foundingDate":"March 3, 1923","sameAs":["https://www.facebook.com/time","https://www.instagram.com/time/?hl=en","https://twitter.com/time","https://www.pinterest.com/timemagazine"]}},{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"BreadcrumbList","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"item":{"@id":"/section/health/","name":"Health"}},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"item":{"@id":"/tag/cancer/","name":"Cancer"}},{"@type":"ListItem","position":3,"item":{"@id":"https://time.com/3735792/opdivo-immunotherapy-lung-cancer/","name":"A Breakthrough Treatment for Lung Cancer Approved"}}]},{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"VideoObject","name":"Beating Cancer from the Inside Out","description":"Scientists expect to revolutionize cancer therapy by unlocking the DNA code of the disease.","thumbnailUrl":"https://cdn.jwplayer.com/v2/media/Frmfyee5/poster.jpg?width=720","uploadDate":"2011-06-06T19:24:53.000Z","contentUrl":"https://cdn.jwplayer.com/manifests/Frmfyee5.m3u8","embedUrl":"https://time.com/3735792/opdivo-immunotherapy-lung-cancer/","duration":"PT5M5S","potentialAction":{"@type":"SeekToAction","target":"https://time.com/3735792/opdivo-immunotherapy-lung-cancer/?jw_start={seek_to_second_number}","startOffset-input":"required name=seek_to_second_number"}}] ```