Afatinib active in many TKI-pretreated patients with NSCLC and uncommon EGFR mutations

the Oncology Nurse Advisor take:

Afatinib is clinically active and well tolerated in many tyrosine kinase inhibitor (TKI)-pretreated patients with non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) harboring uncommon EGFR mutations, according to a new study published in the journal The Oncologist.

For the study, researchers enrolled 60 patients with advanced or metastatic, histologically confirmed NSCLC that progressed after at least one line of chemotherapy and one line of EGFR TKI treatment. Researchers identified a total of 66 uncommon EGFR mutations, including 30 T790M mutations. Most patients received the oral TKI as third- or fourth-line treatment.

Results showed that median time to treatment failure was 3.8 months in patients with uncommon mutations compared with 5.1 months in those with common mutations. The study demonstrated pronounced activity with a time to treatment failure of greater than 12 months in patients with E709X mutations.

“Although indirectly assessed, the results indicate that patients with uncommon EGFR mutations can derive benefit from treatment with the irreversible ErbB family blocker afatinib, even in some cases of tumors harboring resistance-mediating exon 20 mutations,” the authors write.