Industry Update: Agents Slow Disease Progression, Improve Daily Function in Metastatic Breast Cancer
Results from the GINECO group study demonstrate Afinitor’s ability to buy more time for patients while Xgeva makes everyday life less painful.
Afinitor May Offer New Treatment Strategy in Metastatic Breast Cancer
Adding everolimus (Afinitor) to tamoxifen in patients with hormone receptor-positive/EGFR-negative metastatic breast cancer who were pretreated with an aromatase inhibitor delayed disease progression compared with tamoxifen alone.
Results from a phase II study by the GINECO* group showed the proportion of metastatic breast cancer patients without tumor progression at six months was 61.1% for those taking everolimus and tamoxifen vs 42.1% for patients given tamoxifen alone. Disease progression was delayed by a median of 8.6 months with the combination treatment vs 4.5 months with tamoxifen alone. The combination regimen turned in a statistically significant reduction in the risk of disease of 47% (P = .0026) based on the exploratory analysis (SABCS 2010 abstract S1-6).
Developer Novartis has initiated the phase III BOLERO* trial to continue studying everolimus in metastatic breast cancer.
*GINECO = Groupe d’Investigateurs Nationaux pour l’Etude des Cancers Ovariens et du sein
*BOLERO = Breast cancer trials of Oral Everolimus
Breast Cancer Patients With Bone Mets Find Denosumab Lessens Daily Life Disruption
Breast cancer patients with bone metastases reported less interference with their daily function when they took 120 mg of denosumab (Xgeva) vs 4 mg of intravenous zoledronic acid (Zometa), according to a study out of Houston’s MD Anderson Cancer Center and other institutions.
Patients completed a Brief Pain Inventory (BPI), as well as other interference scales, and reported that time to improvement in pain interference with activity generally occurred more quickly with denosumab compared with zoledronic acid (70 days vs 86 days; P = .09). In patients with no pain or mild pain at baseline, denosumab demonstrated a trend toward shorter time to improvement (93 days vs 120 days; P = .06) and longer time to worsening pain (369 vs 232 days; P = .12).
Denosumab is developed by Amgen (SABCS 2010 abstract P1-31-01).
