ESMO Asia 2020: Adding PD-L1 Inhibitor to Platinum-Based Chemotherapy for NSCLC
Posted: Friday, December 4, 2020
According to Caicun Zhou, PhD, MD, of the Shanghai Pulmonary Hospital, China, and colleagues, treatment with the anti–PD-L1 monoclonal antibody CS1001 plus platinum-based chemotherapy appears to provide a significantly longer progression-free survival than chemotherapy alone in patients with treatment-naive advanced non–small cell lung cancer (NSCLC). The results of the phase III GEMSTONE-302 trial, which were presented during the European Society for Medical Oncology (ESMO) Asia Virtual Congress 2020 (Abstract LBA4), suggested this combination therapy was also well tolerated.
Patients were randomly assigned in a 2:1 ratio to receive platinum-based chemotherapy in combination with either CS1001 (n = 320) or a placebo (n = 159), followed by maintenance with either CS1001 or placebo. Those with nonsquamous histology were also administered pemetrexed as maintenance therapy.
The median duration of progression-free survival was 7.8 months with CS1001 and 4.9 months with the placebo (stratified hazard ratio = 0.50; P < .0001). The objective response rate was higher with CS1001 than with the placebo (61.4% vs. 39.2%, respectively). The median duration of overall survival was 14.8 months with the placebo; however, it was not reached with CS1001 (stratified hazard ratio = 0.66). Treatment with CS1001 seemed to provide a similar clinical benefit across subgroups with different histology and PD-L1 expression levels.
Both treatments appeared to exhibit similar safety profiles; however, immune-related adverse events of grades 1 and 2 were reported with CS1001. Adverse events of grade 3 or higher occurred in 61.9% of the patients treated with CS1001 and in 61.6% of those treated with the placebo. The safety profiles appeared to be consistent with previous reports.
Disclosure: For full disclosures of the study authors, visit annalsofoncology.org.
