Afatinib a Better Choice for EGFR-mutated Lung Cancer in First-line Treatment

SINGAPORE and LUGANO, Switzerland, December 20, 2015 /PRNewswire/ --

LUX-Lung 7 trial reveals that the second-generation EGFR tyrosine kinase inhibitor significantly improved PFS in naive patients with advanced mutated lung cancer compared to gefitinib 

TRADITIONAL CHINESE FULL TEXT 

http://www.esmo.org/content/download/73092/1302111/TRAD+CHIN_PR_LBA2_Lung_LUXLung7.pdf

SIMPLE CHINESE FULL TEXT http://www.esmo.org/content/download/73091/1302105/SIMP+CHIN_PR_LBA2_Lung_LUXLung7.pdf

JAPANESE FULL TEXT http://www.esmo.org/content/download/73090/1302099/JAP_PR_LBA2_Lung_LUXLung7.pdf

Patients with EGFR-activating mutations in advanced lung cancer seem to benefit more from afatinib than gefitinib as first-line treatment, researchers report at the first ESMO Asia 2015 Congress in Singapore.

In the global, randomised, open-label Phase IIb LUX-Lung 7 (LL7) trial ^[1], the irreversible ErbB family blocker afatinib significantly improved efficacy versus gefitinib across a range of clinically relevant endpoints, such as progression-free survival, time-to-treatment failure and objective response rate. "Based on these results I would consider afatinib as the EGFR tyrosine kinase inhibitor (TKI) of choice for the first-line treatment for patients with EGFR mutation-positive non-small-cell lung cancer (NSCLC)," lead author, Professor Keunchil Park, head of the Division of Hematology/Oncology at Samsung Medical Center, Sungkyunkwan University School of Medicine, Seoul, Korea, said.

NSCLC is the most common type of lung cancer: activating epidermal growth factor receptor (EGFR) gene mutations are more frequently observed in non-smokers and women, and occur in 50% of Asians and only 10% of non-Asians.

In the first head-to-head LUX-Lung 7 trial, afatinib candidates to be a better choice for EGFR-mutation positive NSCLC naive patients who had received no prior treatment. "First-line afatinib treatment significantly reduced the risk of lung cancer progression by 27% versus gefitinib," Park said. "Interestingly, the improvement in progression-free survival became more pronounced over time with a significantly higher proportion of patients alive and progression-free at 18 months (27% vs 15%; p=0.018) and 24 months (18% vs 8%; p=0.018), showing a greater long-term benefit of using the irreversible ErbB family blocker afatinib."

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