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Selpercatinib, a novel, highly selective and potent, inhibitor of RET, demonstrated clinically meaningful antitumor activity with manageable toxicity in heavily pretreated and treatment-naive RET fusion-positive non-small-cell lung cancer patients in a Phase I/II clinical trial. LIBRETTO-431 (NCT04194944) is a randomized, global, multicenter, open-label, Phase III trial, evaluating selpercatinib versus carboplatin or cisplatin and pemetrexed chemotherapy with or without pembrolizumab in treatment-naive patients with locally advanced/metastatic RET fusion-positive nonsquamous non-small-cell lung cancer. The primary end point is progression-free survival by independent review. Key secondary end points include overall survival, response rate, duration of response and progression-free survival. Clinical trial registration: NCT04194944 (ClinicalTrials.gov)

A majority of patients with advanced or metastatic non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) will experience disease progression after first-line therapy. Patients who have advanced NSCLC that is especially aggressive, which is defined as disease that rapidly progresses on first-line treatment or disease that is refractory to first-line treatment, have a critical unmet medical need. These patients have a poor prognosis in the second-line setting. Several studies have recently shown that treatment with an antiangiogenic therapy may benefit these patients. This review summarizes the approved antiangiogenic therapies for the treatment of patients with advanced NSCLC in the second-line setting, specifically focusing on the outcomes from subgroups of patients with rapidly progressing or refractory disease. Several antiangiogenic agents, as monotherapy or in combination with other treatments, have been or are currently being studied in patients with advanced NSCLC. Antiangiogenics that are approved for use in patients with advanced NSCLC are limited to bevacizumab in combination with chemotherapy (nonsquamous NSCLC), ramucirumab in combination with docetaxel (all histologies), and nintedanib in combination with docetaxel (adenocarcinoma histology). This review focuses on the efficacy, safety, and quality of life outcomes in the subpopulation of patients with rapidly progressing or refractory NSCLC treated with approved antiangiogenic therapies in the second-line setting. We also discuss the impact of newly approved immunotherapy agents on the outcomes of patients with aggressive or refractory disease. Studies in progress and planned future research will determine if combination treatment with antiangiogenics and immunotherapies will benefit patients with aggressive, advanced NSCLC.

Background Ramucirumab, the human immunoglobulin G1 monoclonal antibody receptor antagonist of vascular endothelial growth factor receptor 2, has been approved for treating gastric/gastroesophageal junction, non-small-cell lung, and metastatic colorectal cancers. With the completion of six global, randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled, phase III trials across multiple tumor types, an opportunity now exists to further establish the safety parameters of ramucirumab across a large patient population. Materials and methods An individual patient meta-analysis across the six completed phase III trials was conducted and the relative risk (RR) and associated 95% confidence intervals (CIs) were derived using fixed-effects or mixed-effects models for all-grade and high-grade adverse events (AEs) possibly related to vascular endothelial growth factor pathway inhibition. The number needed to harm was also calculable due to the placebo-controlled nature of all six registration standard trials. Results A total of 4996 treated patients (N = 2748 in the ramucirumab arm andN = 2248 in the control, placebo arm) were included in this meta-analysis. Arterial thromboembolic events [ATE; all-grade, RR: 0.8, 95% CI 0.5–1.3; high-grade (grade ≥3), RR: 0.9, 95% CI 0.5–1.7], venous thromboembolic events (VTE; all-grade, RR: 0.7, 95% CI 0.5–1.1; high-grade, RR: 0.7, 95% CI 0.4–1.2), high-grade bleeding (RR: 1.1, 95% CI 0.8–1.5), and high-grade gastrointestinal (GI) bleeding (RR: 1.1, 95% CI 0.7–1.7) did not demonstrate a definite increased risk with ramucirumab. A higher percentage of hypertension, proteinuria, low-grade (grade 1–2) bleeding, GI perforation, infusion-related reaction, and wound-healing complications were observed in the ramucirumab arm compared with the control arm. Conclusions Ramucirumab may be distinct among antiangiogenic agents in terms of ATE, VTE, high-grade bleeding, or high-grade GI bleeding by showing no clear evidence for an increased risk of these AEs in this meta-analysis of a large and diverse patient population. Ramucirumab is consistent with other angiogenic inhibitors in the risk of developing certain AEs. Clinical Trial Numbers: NCT00917384 (REGARD), NCT01170663 (RAINBOW), NCT01168973 (REVEL), NCT01183780 (RAISE), NCT01140347 (REACH), and NCT00703326 (ROSE).

Objectives The REVEL study demonstrated improved efficacy for patients with advanced non-small cell lung cancer treated with ramucirumab plus docetaxel, independent of histology. This exploratory analysis characterized the treatment effect in REVEL patients who were refractory to prior first-line treatment. Materials and methods Refractory patients had a best response of progressive disease to first-line treatment. Endpoints included overall survival (OS), progression-free survival (PFS), objective response rate (ORR), quality of life (QoL), and safety. Kaplan-Meier and Cox proportional hazards regression were performed for OS and PFS, and Cochran-Mantel-Haenszel test was used for response. QoL was assessed with the Lung Cancer Symptom Scale. Sensitivity analyses were performed on subgroups of the intent-to-treat population with limited time on first-line therapy. Results Of 1253 randomized patients in REVEL, 360 (29%) were refractory to first-line treatment. Baseline characteristics were largely balanced between treatment arms. In the control arm, median OS for refractory patients was 6.3 versus 10.3 months for patients not meeting this criterion, demonstrating the poor prognosis of refractory patients. Median OS (8.3 vs. 6.3 months; HR, 0.86; 95% CI, 0.68–1.08), median PFS (4.0 vs. 2.5 months; HR, 0.71; 95% CI, 0.57–0.88), and ORR (22.5% vs. 12.6%) were improved in refractory patients treated with ramucirumab compared to placebo, without new safety concerns or further deteriorating patient QoL. Conclusions The effect of ramucirumab in refractory patients is similar to that in the intent-to-treat population. The benefit/risk profile for refractory patients suggests that ramucirumab plus docetaxel is an appropriate treatment option even in this difficult-to-treat population.

3588 Background: Randomized trials involving agents targeting oncogene addicted tumors have greatly increased over the past decade. Whether clinical response rates can predict or correlate with efficacy measures such as progression-free survival (PFS) or overall survival (OS) has not been established in molecularly enriched patient populations. In this meta-analysis, we investigated whether improvements in objective response rate (ORR) in comparative trials using targeted agents could serve as a potential surrogate endpoint for improvements in PFS or OS in populations with oncogene addicted cancer. Methods: CT.gov and MEDLINE databases were queried (using commercial text mining software I2E) for randomized, phase 3 clinical trials based on the following prospectively defined criteria: (1) use of agents targeting EGFR activating mutations (erlotinib, gefitinib, afatinib, dacomitinib, osimertinib), ALK and ROS1 rearrangements (crizotinib, ceritinib, alectinib), BRAF V600E or V600K mutations (dabrafenib), and BCR-ABL fusion protein (imatinib, dasatinib, nilotinib, ponatinib); (2) must include molecularly enriched trial populations (biomarker subgroup data included if available); (3) control arms should not include targeted agents directed towards those molecularly enriched populations. ORR, OS, and PFS data were manually extracted from the relevant studies and correlative analyses (weighted Pearson correlation) were performed. Results: 61 trials were identified with 15 ultimately meeting the prespecified criteria. ORR effect size (both the ORR difference and log odds ratio) and the log PFS hazard ratio were strongly correlated (-0.78, p-value = 0.0007). No significant correlation was found between ORR and OS. Conclusions: In our analyses, a strong correlation between ORR and PFS was found in randomized clinical trials investigating agents targeting oncogene-driven cancers. Establishing a correlation between ORR and OS was limited, most probably due to confounding factors such as treatment cross-over following progression, number of subsequent therapies and long post-progression survival in this setting. These findings further warrant the use of ORR as a surrogate for PFS in biomarker-driven studies.

Introduction Ramucirumab, a recombinant human immunoglobulin G1 monoclonal antibody receptor antagonist designed to block the ligand-binding site of vascular endothelial growth factor receptor-2 (VEGFR-2), was evaluated as second-line treatment in combination with docetaxel in patients with non–small-cell lung cancer in the REVEL trial ( NCT01168973 ). Ramucirumab significantly improved overall survival (OS) and progression-free survival (PFS). We report age subgroup analysis results primarily on the basis of a 65-year cutoff. Patients and Methods Patients were randomized 1:1 to ramucirumab with docetaxel or placebo with docetaxel (n = 1253). Of these, 798 were younger than 65 years (ramucirumab, n = 391; control, n = 407) and 455 were 65 years or older (ramucirumab, n = 237; control, n = 218). Treatment comprised 21-day cycles of 75 mg/m2 docetaxel with 10 mg/kg ramucirumab or placebo. Prespecified age subgroup analyses were performed, including OS, PFS, and objective response rate. Quintiles age analysis was conducted to establish a relationship between efficacy and age. The Lung Cancer Symptom Scale (LCSS) measured quality of life outcomes. Safety was assessed according to adverse events (AEs). Results Patients younger than 65 years showed favorable OS outcomes with ramucirumab treatment (hazard ratio [HR], 0.74; 95% confidence interval [CI], 0.62-0.87; P Conclusion In this subgroup analysis, true treatment effect differences on the basis of age have not been established, and treatment should not be deterred solely because of age.

Taking decisions during the development of a new drug requires combining many and varying pieces of information. The interconnections between these different pieces of information are often only partially known and in some cases merely conjectured. Despite this uncertainty, decisions must be taken – often with regard to the balance of risk and benefit – in order to make progress. A clear, consistent and efficient methodology for describing the structure of a project and the comprehensive state of knowledge at any point in time is required in order to add transparency to the decision process. A viable methodology must allow for a natural characterization of the uncertainty inherent in the drug development process and a relatively easy implementation. We present a possible solution that satisfies these requirements. The foundation of the proposed approach is based on a beta-binomial update mechanism well known in Bayesian statistics. This work provides a consistent framework for solving hierarchical multicriteria decision problems. Copyright © 2014 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.