Pfizer’s targeted cancer therapy Xalkori (crizotinib) significantly extended progression-free survival in previously-untreated patients with a particular form of non-small cell lung cancer taking part in a late-stage trial compared to chemotherapy alone.
Data from the Phase III PROFILE 1014 study, published in The New England Journal of Medicine, showed that patients with ALK-positive advanced NSCLC given Pfizer’s kinase inhibitor had a median PFS of 10.9 months compared to 7 months for those in the chemotherapy arm. Also, the objective response rate was much higher at 74% versus 45%, the firm noted.
On the safety side, no unexpected issues arose in the trial, with the most commonly reported adverse events observed in the Xalkori being vision disorder (71%), diarrohea (61%), nausea (56%) and oedema (49%), and with chemotherapy, nausea (59%), fatigue (38%), vomiting (36%) and decreased appetite (34%).
ALK gene rearrangements are present in about 5% of NSCLC cancers typically occurring in younger patients who don’t smoke. By identifying and enrolling only those patients whose advanced NSCLC tumours are ALK-positive, “this trial was able to demonstrate the superiority of Xalkori over an intravenous platinum-based chemotherapy regimen that has been a standard first-line treatment for more than a decade,” said Mace Rothenberg, chief medical officer for Pfizer Oncology.
“We are delighted that these results are being published just 18 months after publication of PROFILE 1007, which demonstrated superiority of Xalkori over standard chemotherapy when used in the second-line setting to treat patients with ALK-positive advanced NSCLC”, he added.
However, in an accompanying editorial published in the NEJM, Dan Longo, M.D, reportedly concedes that superiority over platinum-based chemo regimens has been proven in a “rigorous way”, but also says questions remain, such as why 26% of patients failed to respond to the targeted therapy.
