Direct Acting Antivirals (DAA) and Immune Checkpoint Inhibitors (ICIs) Therapy in Patients with Lung Cancer and Hepatitis C

Patients with cancer and viral hepatitis have usually been excluded from many clinical trials with ICIs. Therefore, the clinical impact of hepatitis C virus (HCV) infection in these patients has been poorly explored. DAA agents lead to a viral clearance of HCV in more than 90% of cases, and preclinical data correlated the decline of HCV-RNA at 14 days from the start of DAA therapy with the virological outcome (i.e. the sustained virological response [SVR], defined as undetectable HCV-RNA at 12 [SVR12] or 24 [SVR24] weeks from the end of the DAA therapy).