Research Says Targeted Cancer Drug More Effective After First-Line Treatment

Targeted cancer drug Erlotinib has comparable efficacy to chemotherapy, and is better tolerated, in hard-to-treat cases where a patient's cancer has progressed quickly

Targeted cancer drug Erlotinib has comparable efficacy to chemotherapy, and is better tolerated, in hard-to-treat cases where a patient's cancer has progressed quickly after treatment with first-line therapy, new trials have found.

The study included only those patients whose disease had progressed under first-line chemotherapy.

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"These patients have an extremely poor prognosis and few treatment options. An effective alternative to chemotherapy is therefore very important, since chemo-related side-effects can result in further physical deterioration in patients who are already very sick," said Tudor Ciuleanu from the Institute of Oncology Ion Chiricuta, Cluj-Napoca, Romania.

Historically, data has shown that Erlotinib was more tolerable than chemotherapy, but many physicians had assumed that Erlotinib would not be as effective in this difficult-to-treat patient population compared to chemotherapy.

The open-label study included 424 patients whose lung cancer had progressed rapidly after treatment with first-line chemotherapy. Of these, 203 were treated with erlotinib, and 221 received chemotherapy with either docetaxel or pemetrexed.

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No difference in overall survival was seen between the two groups, the researchers reported. Nor was there any significant difference in progression-free survival time.

"TITAN is important because it confirms that erlotinib has comparable efficacy to chemotherapy with better tolerability, even in this population of patients with poor prognosis," said Ciuleanu.

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"The study included a broad, unselected population, showing that patients can benefit from erlotinib regardless of their EGFR mutation status. Erlotinib therefore gives doctors an effective alternative to chemotherapy after disease progression, without chemo-related side-effects," added Ciuleanu.

The findings were discussed at the international TITAN study at the European Multidisciplinary Conference in Thoracic Oncology in Lugano, Switzerland.

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Source-ANI