Among patients with high-expression PD-L1+ tumors, 5.3% and 20.2 % of patients in the avelumab Q2W and QW arms vs 30.6% of patients in the chemotherapy arm received poststudy anti-PD-(L)1 treatment.

Of 792 patients, 529 had PD-L1+ tumors (264 vs 265 in the avelumab vs docetaxel arms, respectively)....in ≥50% PD-L1+ subgroups, 2-year OS rates were 36.4% (29.1%-43.7%) vs 17.7% (11.8%-24.7%), and in the ≥80% subgroup were 40.2% (31.3%-49.0%) vs 20.3% (12.9%-28.8%), respectively...post hoc analyses at 2 years of follow-up showed that 2-year OS rates were doubled with avelumab in subgroups with higher PD-L1 expression (≥50% and ≥80%).

In PD-L1-positive (≥ 1%) patients, no significant survival benefit was observed between the avelumab and docetaxel groups (11.4 months vs. 10.3 months) except the high PD-L1 expression groups (≥ 50% cutoff and ≥ 80% cutoff). Increased ORR was consistent with the higher expression of PD-L1 in avelumab group instead of docetaxel group indicating PD-L1 as an essential predictive biomarker for avelumab