Could erlotinib treatment lead to acute cardiovascular events in patients with lung adenocarcinoma after chemotherapy failure?

Tulay Kus, Gokmen Aktas, Alper Sevinc, Mehmet Emin Kalender, Celaletdin Camci Department of Internal Medicine, Division of Medical Oncology, Gaziantep University, Gaziantep, Turkey Abstract: Erlotinib, an epidermal growth factor receptor and tyrosine kinase inhibitor, is a targeted drug that was approved for the treatment of non-small-cell lung cancers and pancreatic cancers. Targeted tyrosine kinase inhibitors are known to have cardiotoxic effects. However, erlotinib does not have a statistically proven effect of increasing acute cardiovascular event (ACE) risk. Preclinical studies showed that beta agonist stimulation among rats that were administered erlotinib led to cardiovascular damage. Thus, there would be an aggregate effect of erlotinib on ACE, although it is not thought to be a cardiotoxic drug itself. In this paper, we present two non-small-cell lung cancer cases that developed ACE under erlotinib treatment. Keywords: erlotinib, lung cancer, myocardial infarction, EGFR