A Response to Article Anlotinib Hydrochloride and PD-1 Blockade as a Salvage Second-Line Treatment in Patients with Progress of Local Advanced Non-Small Cell Lung Cancer in Half a Year after Standard Treatment [Letter]

The works performed by Yu et al1 were much appreciated and brought a novel insight in the use of two types of anti-cancer medications as the proposed option for treatment of the progressive local advanced non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC). This treatment was suggested to be applied at least 6 months after the standard treatment, the synchronous radiotherapy and chemotherapy, as the second-line treatment substituting the standard second-line chemotherapy, either checkpoint blockade blocker, docetaxel or pemetrexed. The results of the study performed were quite promising, as the median progressive-free survival (PFS); duration from the initial treatment to the disease progression or death, of the monitored patients reached 9–10 months. The resulting PFS in this study was higher than the PFS observed in patients receiving the standard second-line chemotherapy. A previous study by Reck et al2 had also reported the advantages of a combination of docetaxel, antineoplastic cytotoxic agent with multiple tyrosine kinases and anti-angiogenic chemotherapy agent, nintedanib, which was in the same class chemotherapy with anlotinib, as the second-line therapy after being treated with either chemo- or immunotherapy