A Retrospective Observational Study of Nivolumab in Combination With Chemotherapy as Neoadjuvant Therapy for Resectable NSCLC Patients: Real-World Experience in Taiwan (NEOREAL)

Rationale : In Taiwan, lung cancer is the most common cancer and has the highest mortality rate among the top 10 cancers, accounting for 19.4% of all cancer-related deaths in 2022. Additionally, 94.3% of lung cancer cases were diagnosed as NSCLC (n = 16,420). Based on clinical staging (per AJCC 8th edition), 2.26% of NSCLC cases were classified as stage 0, 35.75% as stage I, 3.79% as stage II, 8.80% as stage III, 41.01% as stage IV, and 8.39% had an unknown stage.25 The US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approved nivolumab in combination with platinum-doublet chemotherapy for the neoadjuvant treatment of patients with resectable NSCLC in March 2022 and Taiwan subsequently approved this indication in February 2023. However, the real-world effectiveness of this treatment and the NSCLC patient profile, particularly in the Taiwanese population, remains unclear, as does the patient profile for adjuvant therapy following neoadjuvant chemo-immunotherapy (chemo-IO). Therefore, this study aims to address these gaps and consolidate nivolumab's role in resectable NSCLC by bridging the data gap with real-world evidence.