Bevacizumab Combined with Pemetrexed for Advanced Non-Squamous Non-Small Cell Lung Cancer

the Cancer Therapy Advisor take:

After being combined with standard first-line chemotherapy, bevacizumab (a monoclonal antibody against vascular endothelial growth factor) was shown to have clinical benefit for patients with advanced non-squamous non-small cell lung cancer.

Research recently published in Tumour Biology: The Journal of The International Society for Oncodevelopmental Biology and Medicine investigated the affect of combining bevacizumab with pemetrexed as it related to progression-free survival in patients with advanced non-squamous non-small cell lung cancer after the failure of a minimum of one prior chemotherapy treatment.

In order to be eligible for inclusion in the study, patients must have failed at least one prior platinum-based chemotherapy treatment, have metastatic, locally advanced, or recurrent non-squamous non-small cell lung cancer, and performance status of 0 to 2.

Patient in the study received 500 mg/m² of intravenous pemetrexed on day 1 and folic acid, vitamin B12, dexamethasone, and 7.5 mg/kg of intravenous bevacizumab on day 1 of a 21-day cycle.

Treatment was administered until toxicity was unacceptable, disease progression occurred, or the treatment was stopped by request of the patient. The primary endpoint of the study was progression-free survival. Thirty-three patients were enrolled between December 2011 and October 2013.

The median age of enrolled patients was 55 years and 63.6% of patients were women. Median overall survival was 15.83 months (95 % confidence interval: 10.52, 21.15 months) and overall response rates were 6.45%. 

Overall, the research showed that combining bevacizumab and pemetrexed on a 21-day cycle is effective for improving the progression-free survival of patients with non-squamous non-small cell lung cancer who have failed prior therapies.