medwireNews: Treatment with checkpoint inhibitors could be an option for patients with relapsed malignant pleural mesothelioma, say the MAPS2 researchers who reported the survival data of patients given nivolumab alone and alongside ipilimumab.
They previously reported the primary endpoint of disease control rate at 12 weeks, finding meaningful improvements relative to data from historical series or prior trials of non-immunotherapy agents.
And now, delegates at the ESMO 2017 Congress in Madrid, Spain, heard that among 63 patients with disease progression after one or two previous lines of therapy, single-agent nivolumab 3 mg/kg every 2 weeks resulted in a median progression-free survival (PFS) of 4.0 months. Combining nivolumab at the same dose with ipilimumab 1 mg/kg every 6 weeks led to a median PFS of 5.6 months among the 62 patients who received the duo.
Although overall survival (OS) are not yet mature, said presenter Gérard Zalcman (Hôpital Bichat-Claude Bernard and Université Paris-Diderot, France), this analysis conducted at a median follow-up of 15 months showed median OS times of 13.6 months and unreached for the monotherapy and combination arms, respectively.
Grade 3 adverse events attributable to treatment occurred in 12.7% of monotherapy-treated patients and 22.9% of those given the combination. There were no grade 4 or 5 events in the nivolumab alone arm, but the corresponding rates in the combination group were 3.3% and 4.9%.
Describing the toxicity as “globally manageable,” Zalcman concluded that “[t]hese updated results support the efficacy of checkpoints inhibitors in [malignant pleural mesothelioma] patients,” warranting further investigation in phase III trials.
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