Disclosure: Dr. Monnet reports serving as the principal investigator of a drug trial for MSD during the conduct of the study. The remaining authors declare no conflict of interest.
The advent of immune-checkpoint inhibitors during the past decade represents a major advancement in the treatment of non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) with personalized treatment. Platinum-based chemotherapy has reached its efficacy threshold, with its use remaining limited by its toxicity. For NSCLC, inhibitors of the PD1 protein and its ligand PDL1 show promising clinical activity and induce durable responses in patients with advanced disease. The US Food and Drug Administration has approved pembrolizumab for treatment-naïve metastatic NSCLC with ≥50% of tumor cells expressing PDL1 and for metastatic NSCLC with ≥1% PDL1 expression after progression following first-line platinum-based doublet chemotherapy. In 2017, it also authorized the first-line combination of pembrolizumab and carboplatin–pemetrexed chemotherapy without selection based on PDL1 expression, but European health authorities are still waiting for the results of a Phase III trial. In this review, the clinical results of published and ongoing studies evaluating pembrolizumab for advanced NSCLC are analyzed and the potential role of PDL1 as a factor predictive of overall responses addressed.
9045 Background: Brigatinib is a next-generation ALK inhibitor initially developed in pre-treated ALK+ NSCLC. Data on the efficacy of brigatinib in real world remain rare. Methods: This retrospective multicentric study analyzed ALK-+ advanced NSCLC patients pretreated with at least two tyrosine-kinase inhibitors, including crizotinib, and enrolled in the brigatinib French early access program. The primary endpoint was investigator-assessed progression-free survival (PFS). Results: 104 patients were included (mean age, 56.6 years; never smokers, 61.5%; adenocarcinoma, 98.1%). Patients had received a median of 3 previous treatment lines, including at least 2 ALK inhibitors, mainly crizotinib then ceritinib in 93% patients. At brigatinib initiation, 59.1% had performance status 0-1, 51.9% had ≥ 3 metastatic sites, 74.5% had central nervous system metastases (CNS) and 8.8% had carcinomatous meningitis. Median duration of brigatinib treatment was 6.7 (0.06–20.7) months. Median PFS was 6.6 (95% CI, 4.8–9.9) months for the entire population. In the 91 evaluable patients, disease control rate was 78.2% (stable, 28.2%; partial response, 45.7%; complete response, 4.3%). From brigatinib start, median overall survival was 17.2 (95% CI:11.0–not reached) months. Among the 68 patients with progressive disease after brigatinib, CNS was involved in 29.4% of cases. Ten (9.6%) patients had treatment discontinuation due to intolerance or patient request. Median OS from the diagnostic of NSCLC was 75,3 (95% CI, 38,2-174,6) months. Conclusions: This study confirms the efficacy of brigatinib in a cohort of patients heavily pretreated for ALK-+advanced NSCLC. These real-world results are consistent with clinical data reported in clinical trials.
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