Addition of Necitumumab Improves Survival in Advanced Lung Cancer

the Cancer Therapy Advisor take:

The addition of necitumumab to gemcitabine and cisplatin improves overall survival in patients with advanced squamous non-small-cell lung cancer (NSCLC) and may be a new first-line treatment option for this disease, a recent study published online ahead of print in the journal The Lancet Oncology has shown.

For the open-label, international, phase III trial, researchers enrolled 1,093 patients with confirmed stage IV squamous NSCLC who had not received previous treatment for their disease.

Patients were randomly assigned 1:1 to receive gemcitabine 1,250 mg/m2 IV on days 1 and 8 and cisplatin 75 mg/m2 on day 1 of a 3-week cycle with or without necitumumab 800 mg IV on days 1 and 8. Patients continued to receive necitumumab after chemotherapy until disease progression or unacceptable toxicity.

Results showed that median overall survival was 11.5 months (95% CI: 10.4, 12.6) with necitumumab versus 9.9 months (95% CI: 8.9, 11.1) with chemotherapy alone (HR = 0.84; 95% CI: 0.74, 0.96; P = 0.01).

In regard to safety, researchers found that the safety profile of necitumumab plus chemotherapy was acceptable and mostly what they expected.

Necitumumab is a second-generation, recombinant, human immunoglobulin G1 EGFR antibody.