Paclitaxel alone and paclitaxel plus bevacizumab are both active as treatments for patients with advanced angiosarcoma, but the addition of bevacizumab does not provide any additional benefit over paclitaxel alone, a new study published in the Journal of Clinical Oncology has shown.
For the phase 2 trial, researchers enrolled 52 patients with advanced angiosarcomas. Of those, 50 patients were randomly assigned to receive paclitaxel 90 mg/m2 weekly for six 28-day cycles or paclitaxel plus bevacizumab 10 mg/kg every 2 weeks. Patients in the combination arm then received bevacizumab maintenance therapy 15 mg/kg every 3 weeks until disease progression or unacceptable toxicity.
Of the 50 patients that received treatment, 49% had their primary disease site in the breast and 12% of patients had primary disease site in the skin. In addition, 34% of patients had visceral disease and 49% of patients had radiation-induced angiosarcoma.
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During a median follow-up time of 14.5 months, results showed that 6-month progression-free survival rates were 54% and 57% in the paclitaxel alone arm and the combination arm, respectively. The median overall survival rates were 19.5 months and 15.9 months, respectively.
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In regard to safety, the frequency of adverse events was higher in the combination arm and one patient in the combination arm died due to treatment-related intestinal occlusion.
The findings suggest that no additional investigation is warranted to study paclitaxel plus bevacizumab for the treatment of patients with advanced angiosarcomas.
Reference
- Ray-Coquard IL, Domont J, Tresch-Bruneel E, et al. Pacltaxel given once per week with or without bevacizumab in patients with advanced angiosarcoma: a randomized phase II trial. J Clin Oncol. 2015. [epub ahead of print]. doi: 10.1200/JCO.2015.60.8505.
