WCLC 2018: Survival Benefit With Durvalumab After Chemoradiotherapy in Stage III NSCLC
Posted: Monday, October 8, 2018
An update of the phase III PACIFIC trial in patients with stage III, unresectable non–small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) confirmed the initial findings with durvalumab after chemoradiotherapy in these patients. Not only did this monoclonal antibody improve progression-free survival versus placebo in this patient population, it now has been reported that it also demonstrated “statistically significant and clinically meaningful improvement in overall survival as well. Scott J. Antonia, MD, PhD, of H. Lee Moffitt Cancer Center and Research Institute in Tampa, Florida, presented these study results during a Plenary Session at the International Association for the Study of Lung Cancer (IASLC) 19th World Conference on Lung Cancer (WCLC) in Toronto (Abstract PL02.01).
“Results of PACIFIC provide compelling evidence for the unprecedented benefit of durvalumab treatment as the standard of care in this patient population,” said Dr. Antonia in an IASLC press release. “Durvalumab offers the first major advance in this disease setting in many years….”
This randomized, double-blinded, placebo-controlled trial included 713 patients in 235 centers across 26 countries. A total of 473 patients received durvalumab, and 236 patients received placebo. The median follow-up duration at data cutoff in March 2018 was 25.2 months.
At 12 months, overall survival was 83.1% with durvalumab and 75.3% with placebo. At 24 months, overall survival was 66.3% with durvalumab and 55.6% with placebo. Thus far, the median overall survival has not been reached in the durvalumab arm compared with 28.7 months in the placebo arm.
Previously, in the first interim analysis of this trial, durvalumab significantly improved progression-free survival versus placebo. Updated progression-free survival remained similar, with a median of 17.2 months and 5.6 months with durvalumab and placebo, respectively. Furthermore, patients treated with durvalumab experienced improvement in the updated time to death or distant metastasis, time to second disease progression, time to first subsequent therapy or death, and time to second subsequent therapy or death.
