Atezolizumab Combo Confirmed as Frontline Standard in Advanced Small Cell Lung Cancer .
Published: Sunday, Sep 29, 2019
Martin Reck, MD, PhD
With follow-up of nearly 2 years, the addition of atezolizumab to first-line carboplatin plus etoposide (CP/ET) for the treatment of extensive stage small cell lung cancer (ES-SCLC) continues to demonstrate improved overall survival (OS) compared with placebo plus CP/ET, according to updated results from the phase III IMpower133 trial.
At a median follow-up of 22.9 months, median OS remained 12.3 months in patients randomized to atezolizumab and 10.3 months in the placebo group (HR, 0.76; 95% CI, 0.60-0.95; P = .0154).1 The long-term follow-up was presented by Martin Reck, MD, PhD, at the 2019 ESMO Congress.
IMpower133 is the first trial to demonstrate a significant improvement in survival as first-line treatment for patients with SCLC since the introduction of platinum-based chemotherapy in the 1990s. Other trials of immunotherapy in SCLC in the first-line setting had shown less promising results.
“Exploratory biomarker analyses that included both PD-L1 immunohistochemistry and blood-based tumor mutational burden suggest that patients derive treatment benefit from the addition of atezolizumab regardless of biomarker status,” said Reck, head, Department of Thoracic Oncology, Lung Clinic Grosshansdorf, Germany.
He added, “Overall, these results confirm the role of the combination of atezolizumab and platinum-based chemotherapy as an attractive new therapeutic opportunity for patients with advanced SCLC.”
Better first-line treatment of ES-SCLC is an unmet need. The IMpower133 study demonstrated a significant improvement in efficacy and a tolerable safety profile by adding atezolizumab to CP/ET, with a statistically significant improvement in median OS and median progression-free survival (PFS) compared with chemotherapy alone.
...