Pemetrexed plus Cisplatin Safe, Effective for Advanced Urothelial Cancer

the Cancer Therapy Advisor take:

According to a new study published in the British Journal of Cancer, the combination of pemetrexed and cisplatin shows activity and is well tolerated for the treatment of patients with advanced urothelial carcinoma.

For the phase 2 study, researchers sought to evaluate the efficacy and safety of pemetrexed, which has previously demonstrated a 30% response rate with minimal toxicity when used as monotherapy for advanced urothelial carcinoma, plus cisplatin for the treatment of patients with advanced urothelial carcinoma.

In the single-arm, multicenter, open-label study, researchers enrolled 42 patients with advanced urothelial carcinoma. Patients had a median age of 66 years and an ECOG performance score of 0-1. Of those enrolled, about 55% had visceral metastases and 57.1% had recurrent disease. All patients received pemetrexed 500mg/m2 intravenously plus cisplatin 70mg/m2 intravenously on day 1 every 3 weeks.

Results showed 27 partial responses, which corresponds to an overall response rate of 64.3% (95% CI: 49.2 - 77.0).

In addition, seven patients had stable disease. The median progression-free survival was 6.9 months (95% CI: 6.2 - 7.6) and the median overall survival was 14.4 months (95% CI: 10.4 - 18.4). In regard to safety, 28.6% of patients experienced grade 3 or 4 neutropenia, but no patients had febrile neutropenia.