Bevacizumab Plus Erlotinib or Erlotinib Alone in EGFR-Mutated Lung Cancer
Posted: Tuesday, November 19, 2019
The combination of bevacizumab and erlotinib showed superior efficacy and acceptable tolerability compared with erlotinib alone in treating patients with EGFR-mutated non–small cell lung cancer (NSCLC). Qing Zhou, MD, PhD, of Guangdong General Hospital and Guangdong Academy of Medical Sciences, China, presented this work at the European Society for Clinical Oncology (ESMO) Congress 2019 (Abstract 1480O) and postulated that this could be a new standard first-line treatment. These findings were also published in Annals of Oncology.
The open-label, randomized phase III CTONG 1509 trial enrolled 311 patients from 14 different centers across China. All enrolled patients had advanced nonsquamous NSCLC with an EGFR mutation. Patients were randomly assigned to receive either 150 mg of erlotinib daily plus 15 mg/kg of bevacizumab every 3 weeks (157 patients) or 150 mg of erlotinib alone every day (154 patients).
The median follow-up time was 22 months for the erlotinib/bevacizumab group and 21.5 months for the erlotinib-alone group. The median progression-free survival was 18 months with the combination therapy, compared with 11.3 months with erlotinib monotherapy (hazard ratio = 0.55). The objective response rate for the combination and monotherapy groups were 86.3% and 84.7%, respectively.
Common grade 3 or higher adverse events occurring in the erlotinib/bevacizumab group were hypertension, proteinuria, and rash. In contrast, the erlotinib-alone group experienced rash, elevated alanine aminotransferase levels, and elevated aspartate aminotransferase levels.
Disclosure: For full disclosures of the study authors, visit academic.oup.com.
