medwireNews: Hyperprogression can occur following treatment with agents targeting programmed cell death protein 1 or its ligand, shows a review of patients with advanced non-small-cell lung cancer (NSCLC).
Of 242 patients treated at one of five French institutions between November 2012 and March 2017, 16% were found to have hyperprogressive disease, as indicated by computed tomography scans showing an absolute increase in the tumor growth rate of at least 50% during treatment relative to baseline.
These patients had worse overall survival compared with not only the total study population, but also the subgroup of patients who progressed but without evidence of hyperprogression, at a median of 3.3 months versus 13.4 and 5.7 months, respectively.
Of note, patients were more likely to have hyperprogressive disease if they had more than two metastatic disease sites before beginning immunotherapy than those with fewer sites (60 vs 42%).
Roberto Ferrara (Gustave Roussy, Villejuif, France) and co-authors, who presented the findings at a poster session at the ESMO 2017 Congress in Madrid, Spain, conclude that more work is needed to better characterize this population of patients.
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