Purpose
To establish minimal important differences (MIDs) for the European Organisation for Research and Treatment for Cancer Quality of life Questionnaire core 30 (EORTC QLQ-C30) in patients with ...metastatic breast cancer.
Methods
The dataset was obtained from the SELECT BC-CONFIRM randomized clinical trial. Anchors obtained from patients (transition items) and clinicians (performance status) were used for anchor-based methods. Anchors obtained through 6 months after starting treatment were used for this analysis. Correlation coefficients of anchor and change in QLQ-C30 and effect size were used to qualify for estimating MIDs. Mean change method and generalized estimating equation were applied to estimate MIDs. Distribution-based methods were used for comparison.
Results
We analyzed a dataset of 154 metastatic breast cancer patients. MIDs were estimated in 8 of 15 scales of QLQ-C30. Estimated MIDs for within-group improvement varied from 7 to 15 and those for deterioration varied from − 7 to − 17. Estimated MIDs for between-group improvement varied from 5 to 11 and those for deterioration varied from − 5 to − 8 across QLQ-C30 scales. Patient-reported anchors were more susceptible to early changes in health status than clinician-reported anchors.
Conclusion
We provided the MIDs of the QLQ-C30 using both patient- and clinicians-reported anchors measured in a randomized trial of Japanese patients with metastatic breast cancer. We recommend patient-reported anchors for anchor-based estimation of MID. Our results can aid patients and clinicians, as well as researchers, in the interpretation of QLQ-C30.
Nivolumab is a human monoclonal antibody against the immune checkpoint receptor programmed death‐1, inhibiting binding to programmed death‐ligand 1 or 2 (PD‐L1 or PD‐L2). This phase 2 study evaluated ...the efficacy and safety of nivolumab in patients with advanced/recurrent uterine cervical cancer, uterine corpus cancer, or soft tissue sarcoma (STS). Patients received nivolumab 240 mg at 2‐week intervals. Primary endpoint was objective response rate; secondary endpoints included overall survival, progression‐free survival, and safety. PD‐L1 expression and microsatellite‐instability (MSI) status were analyzed as potential efficacy biomarkers. Objective response rate was 25%, 23%, and 0% in patients with cervical cancer (n = 20), corpus cancer (n = 22), and STS (n = 21), respectively. The lower 80% confidence intervals of objective response rates in patients with cervical or corpus cancer exceeded the threshold rate (5%); the primary endpoint was met in cervical and corpus cancer, but not in STS. Median progression‐free survival was 5.6, 3.4, and 1.4 months, and 6‐month overall survival was 84%, 73%, and 86% in cervical cancer, corpus cancer, and STS, respectively. The objective response rate was higher in patients with cervical cancer with PD‐L1‐positive (n = 5/15; 33%) versus PD‐L1‐negative (n = 0/5; 0%) tumors. The two patients with corpus cancer classified as MSI‐high responded; the six patients classified as microsatellite stable did not respond. Overall, nivolumab showed acceptable toxicity in all cohorts, with evidence of clinical activity in uterine cervical or corpus cancer, but not in STS. PD‐L1 expression in cervical cancer and MSI‐high in corpus cancer may predict clinical activity of nivolumab in these cancers.
The present study of the programmed death‐1 inhibitor nivolumab showed acceptable toxicity in all cohorts, with evidence of clinical activity in patients with advanced/recurrent uterine cervical or corpus cancer, but not in those with soft tissue sarcoma. Programmed death‐ligand 1 expression in cervical cancer, and microsatellite instability‐high in corpus cancer, may predict clinical activity of nivolumab.
The Cancer-VTE Registry evaluates the occurrence and management of venous thromboembolism in Japanese participants with major solid tumors. Using Registry data, we evaluated the frequency of ...concurrent venous thromboembolism in cancer patients prior to treatment initiation by cancer type.
The Cancer-VTE Registry is an ongoing (March 2017-September 2020) prospective cohort study using a nationwide, multicentre clinical registry. Participants aged ≥20 years with colorectal, lung, stomach, pancreatic, breast or gynecologic cancer, confirmed staging, ≥6 months life expectancy post-registration and who had undergone venous thromboembolism screening were managed with routine clinical care. Venous thromboembolism frequency at registration was evaluated.
Of 9735 participants, 571 (5.9%) had venous thromboembolism at baseline, including asymptomatic 5.5% (n = 540) and symptomatic venous thromboembolism 0.3% (n = 31). Most participants with venous thromboembolism (n = 506, 5.2%) had deep vein thrombosis only; 65 (0.7%) had pulmonary embolism with/without deep vein thrombosis. The prevalence of distal and proximal deep vein thrombosis was 4.8% (n = 466) and 0.9% (n = 83), respectively. The highest prevalence of venous thromboembolism was for pancreatic cancer (8.5%) and the lowest for breast cancer (2.0%). Venous thromboembolism prevalence increased as cancer stage advanced.
Although there was a marked difference in venous thromboembolism by cancer type, the data suggest that cancer stage is an important risk factor for venous thromboembolism. Thus, metastasis seems a critical risk factor for venous thromboembolism. This is the first demonstration of venous thromboembolism prevalence and risk factors in Japanese cancer patients prior to treatment.
UMIN000024942.
NK105 is a novel nanoparticle drug delivery formulation that encapsulates paclitaxel (PTX) in polymeric micelles. We conducted an open-label phase III non-inferiority trial to compare the efficacy ...and safety of NK105 and PTX in metastatic or recurrent breast cancer.
Patients were randomly assigned in a 1:1 ratio to receive either NK105 (65 mg/m
) or PTX (80 mg/m
) on days 1, 8 and 15 of a 28-day cycle. The primary endpoint was progression-free survival (PFS), with a non-inferiority margin of 1.215.
A total of 436 patients were randomised and 211 patients in each group were included in the efficacy analysis. The median PFS was 8.4 and 8.5 months for NK105 and PTX, respectively (adjusted hazard ratio: 1.255; 95% confidence interval: 0.989-1.592). The median overall survival and overall response rates were 31.2 vs. 36.2 months and 31.6% vs. 39.0%, respectively. The two groups exhibited similar safety profiles. The incidence of peripheral sensory neuropathy (PSN) was 1.4% vs. 7.5% (≥Grade 3) for NK105 and PTX, respectively. The patient-reported outcomes of PSN were significantly favourable for NK105 (P < 0.0001).
The primary endpoint was not met, but NK105 had a better PSN toxicity profile than PTX.
ClinicalTrials.gov: NCT01644890.
Subsequent treatments can result in a difficulty in interpretation of the overall survival results in confirmatory oncology clinical trials. To complement the intention‐to‐treat (ITT) analysis ...affected by subsequent treatment patterns unintentional in the trial protocol, several causal methods targeting the per‐protocol effect have been proposed. When two or more types of subsequent treatments are allowed in the trial protocol, however, these methods cannot answer clinical questions such as how sensitive the ITT analysis result is to higher or lower proportions of each subsequent treatment allowed in the trial protocol than observed, and to what extent ITT analysis result is generalizable to subsequent treatment patterns other than observed one. To answer these clinical questions, we propose a sensitivity analysis method for subsequent treatments using the inverse probability of treatment weighting method for stochastic dynamic treatment regimes (DTRs). We formulate oncology clinical trials with subsequent treatments as two‐stage designs in which initial treatments are randomized, but subsequent treatments are observational. In this formulation, we use stochastic DTRs to simulate specific proportions of each subsequent treatment and compare an initial experimental treatment with an initial control treatment under various proportions of each subsequent treatment. We applied our proposed method to a motivating randomized noninferiority trial for metastatic breast cancer. Simulation results are also reported to show the usefulness of the proposed method.
This phase I study in Japanese patients evaluated the safety, pharmacokinetics, and preliminary efficacy of palbociclib, a highly selective and reversible oral cyclin‐dependent kinase 4/6 inhibitor, ...as monotherapy for solid tumors (part 1) and combined with letrozole as first‐line treatment of postmenopausal patients with estrogen receptor‐positive, human epidermal growth factor receptor 2‐negative advanced breast cancer (part 2). Part 1 evaluated palbociclib 100 and 125 mg once daily (3 weeks on/1 week off; n = 6 each group) to determine the maximum tolerated dose. Part 2 evaluated palbociclib maximum tolerated dose (125 mg) plus letrozole 2.5 mg (n = 6). The most common treatment‐related adverse event was neutropenia (all grades/grade 3/4): 100 mg, 83%/67%; 125 mg, 67%/33%; and palbociclib plus letrozole, 100%/83%. Heavier pretreatment with chemotherapy may have resulted in higher neutropenia rates observed with the 100‐mg dose. Palbociclib exposure was higher with 125 vs 100 mg (mean area under the plasma concentration–time curve over dosing interval τ: 1322 vs 547.5 ng·h/mL single dose, 2838 vs 1276 ng·h/mL multiple dose; mean maximum plasma concentration: 104.1 vs 41.4 ng/mL single dose, 185.5 vs 77.4 ng/mL multiple dose). Half‐life was 23–26 h. No drug–drug interactions between palbociclib and letrozole occurred. Four patients had stable disease (≥24 weeks in one patient with rectal cancer 100 mg and one with esophageal cancer 125 mg) in part 1; two patients had partial response and two had stable disease (both ≥24 weeks) in part 2. Palbociclib at the 125‐mg dose (schedule 3/1) was tolerated and is the recommended dose for monotherapy and letrozole combination therapy in Japanese patients. The trials are registered with www.ClinicalTrials.gov: A5481010 and NCT01684215.
This phase 1 study in Japanese patients evaluates the safety, pharmacokinetics, and preliminary efficacy of palbociclib as monotherapy for solid tumors (part 1) and combined with letrozole as first‐line treatment of postmenopausal patients with ER+/HER2− advanced breast cancer (part 2). Overall, the results of this study suggest that palbociclib 125 mg was tolerated and is a recommended dose for monotherapy and letrozole combination therapy in Japanese patients.
The efficacy of lapatinib versus trastuzumab combined with taxanes in the first-line setting of human epidermal growth factor receptor 2 (HER2) -positive metastatic breast cancer (BC) is unknown.
The ...MA.31 trial compared a combination of first-line anti-HER2 therapy (lapatinib or trastuzumab) and taxane therapy for 24 weeks, followed by the same anti-HER2 monotherapy until progression. Stratification was by prior (neo)adjuvant anti-HER2 therapy, prior (neo)adjuvant taxane, planned taxane, and liver metastases. The primary end point was intention-to-treat (ITT) progression-free survival (PFS), defined as time from random assignment to progression by RECIST (version 1.0) criteria, or death for patients with locally assessed HER2-positive tumors. The primary test statistic was a stratified log-rank test for noninferiority. PFS was also assessed for patients with centrally confirmed HER2-positive tumors.
From July 17, 2008, to December 1, 2011, 652 patients were accrued from 21 countries, resulting in 537 patients with centrally confirmed HER2-positive tumors. Median follow-up was 21.5 months. Median ITT PFS was 9.0 months with lapatinib and 11.3 months with trastuzumab. By ITT analysis, PFS was inferior for lapatinib compared with trastuzumab, with a stratified hazard ratio (HR) of 1.37 (95% CI, 1.13 to 1.65; P = .001). In patients with centrally confirmed HER2-positive tumors, median PFS was 9.1 months with lapatinib and 13.6 months with trastuzumab (HR, 1.48; 95% CI, 1.20 to 1.83; P < .001). More grade 3 or 4 diarrhea and rash were observed with lapatinib (P < .001). PFS results were supported by the secondary end point of overall survival, with an ITT HR of 1.28 (95% CI, 0.95 to 1.72; P = .11); in patients with centrally confirmed HER2-positive tumors, the HR was 1.47 (95% CI, 1.03 to 2.09; P = .03).
As first-line therapy for HER2-positive metastatic BC, lapatinib combined with taxane was associated with shorter PFS and more toxicity compared with trastuzumab combined with taxane.
Background
Chemotherapy-induced amenorrhea (CIA) is one of the critical side effects from the chemotherapy in premenopausal patients with breast cancer. The goals of our study are the following: (1) ...to investigate the factors affecting the incidence of CIA; and (2) to evaluate the prognostic role of CIA in premenopausal patients with breast cancer.
Methods
We conducted a post hoc retrospective substudy to examine the incidence of the CIA and the relationship between CIA and prognosis in NSAS-BC02 that compared taxane alone to Doxorubicin(A) Cyclophosphamide(C) followed by taxane in postoperative patients with node-positive breast cancer
Results
Of 395 premenopausal women, 287 (72.7%) had CIA due to protocol treatment. Regarding type of protocol regimen, proportion of CIA was 76.9% in AC Paclitaxel(P), 75.2% in AC Docetaxel(D), 62.8% in PTX, and 75.2% in DTX. Predictive factors of CIA were age increase by 5 years (OR 1.50), ER positivity (OR 2.08), and HER2 3 + ( OR 0.40) according to logistic regression analysis. According to the log rank test and the Cox proportional hazards model, CIA group had significantly better disease-free survival than non-CIA group (
P
< .0001). However, according to time-dependent Cox model that was used to reduce guarantee-time bias, CIA was not a statistically significant prognostic factor in both ER-positive and ER-negative patients.
Conclusion
Treatment with taxane alone caused high frequency of CIA in premenopausal women with breast cancer. CIA did not turn out to be an independent prognostic factor, taking guarantee-time bias into consideration. Further clinical studies are needed to validate these findings.
In a neoadjuvant setting, three parameters for Ki-67 could be obtained: pre-treatment Ki-67, post-treatment Ki-67 and Ki-67 change between pre- and post-treatments. It is uncertain which of the three ...parameters has the greatest prognostic significance, and whether this parameter has significance in each subtype of breast cancer. A total of 385 patients who received neoadjuvant anthracycline followed by taxane chemotherapy and subsequent surgery for breast cancer were analyzed retrospectively. By immunohistochemistry (IHC), patients were divided into four subtypes (Luminal A, Luminal B, Triple negative, and HER2). Ki-67 was examined by IHC in pre-treatment core needle samples and post-treatment surgical excision specimens. The relapse-free survival (RFS) rate was compared among each subtype. The median follow-up period was 56 months. The rate of pathological complete response was higher for HER2 (34.8 %) and Triple negative (24.3 %) subtypes than for Luminal B (8.3 %) and Luminal A (3.8 %) subtypes (
p
< 0.0001). A reduction in Ki-67 was observed in 58.5, 83.4, 70.2, and 74.2 % of patients in the Luminal A, Luminal B, Triple negative, and HER2 subtypes, respectively. Ki-67 change between pre- and post-treatments was an independent prognostic factor, but pre-treatment Ki-67 and post-treatment Ki-67 were not independent prognostic factors in a multivariate analysis. The RFS was significantly different between patients whose Ki-67 was reduced and those not reduced for Luminal B (81.4 vs. 50.0 %,
p
= 0.006), Triple negative (74.8 vs. 43.5 %,
p
= 0.006) and HER2 (82.7 vs. 59.0 %,
p
= 0.009). However, for Luminal A, the difference in RFS was not associated with changes of Ki-67 (78.8 vs. 75.3 %,
p
= 0.193). Ki-67 change between pre- and post-neoadjuvant chemotherapy is an independent prognostic factor in patients of Luminal B, Triple negative, and HER2 subtypes. Pre-treatment Ki-67 and post-treatment Ki-67 were not independent prognostic factors in a multivariate analysis.
Objective
The aim of this study was to investigate the impact of adverse events (AEs) on health utility and health-related quality of life (HRQOL) in patients with metastatic breast cancer undergoing ...first-line chemotherapy.
Methods
We analyzed the data from the SELECT BC study, a multicenter, open-label, randomized, phase III study conducted in Japan, which compared first-line S-1 with taxane therapies. Heath utility and HRQOL were assessed using the EQ-5D-3L and European Organization for Research and Treatment of Cancer Quality of Life Questionnaire Core 30 (EORTC QLQ-C30) at baseline and 3, 6, and 12 months after treatment initiation. Health utility was calculated based on societal preferences, and AEs were reported at each cycle of the study treatment. Linear marginal mean models were used to quantify the impact of the last AEs (with 10 or more incidences) observed before HRQOL assessment on health utility and HRQOL.
Results
Analysis included 380 patients and 12 (of 15) AEs. Grade 1 nausea and oral mucositis, grade 1 and 2 edema, and grade 2 fatigue, motor and sensory neuropathy, and myalgia were significantly associated with disutility, measured using the EQ-5D-3L. Grade 1 oral mucositis, grade 1 and 2 fatigue, and grade 2 sensory neuropathy were significantly associated with impaired global health status in the EORTC QLQ-C30. AEs associated with decrements in the five functioning scales included fatigue, oral mucositis, nausea, edema, motor and sensory neuropathy, and myalgia.
Conclusions
We reported disutilities caused by AEs in patients with metastatic breast cancer under chemotherapy. These findings can be applied to future model-based cost-effectiveness analyses.
Trial Registration Number
C000000416.
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