Pathologic complete response and durable progression-free survival following neoadjuvant chemo-immunotherapy and surgery for stage IIIB small cell lung cancer: A case report

Small cell lung cancer (SCLC) is an aggressive malignant tumor characterized by early dissemination and an extremely poor prognosis. The current standard-of-care treatment for limited-stage SCLC (LS-SCLC) is concurrent chemoradiotherapy followed by Durvalumab based on the phase III ADRIATIC trial. However, further research on patterns of disease progression has revealed that intrathoracic lesions were more likely to occur than extrathoracic lesions as the first site of progression, which indicates even though SCLC is considered a systemic disease, better local control measures are still needed for LS-SCLC. Neoadjuvant chemo-immunotherapy and surgery are becoming the standard treatment for resectable non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC). It remains unclear whether the combination of immunotherapy and chemotherapy is beneficial for SCLC in the neoadjuvant setting. Here, we report a case of a patient with stage IIIB SCLC who underwent surgery and has remained disease-free for 21 months after three cycles of neoadjuvant chemo-immunotherapy, aiming to provide an illustrative basis for this treatment modality.