April 2020, Vol 11, No 2

On March 27, 2020, the FDA approved a new indication for the PD-L1 inhibitor durvalumab (Imfinzi; Astra- Zeneca), in combination with etoposide and either carboplatin or cisplatin, as first-line treatment of patients with extensive-stage small-cell lung cancer (ES-SCLC). Imfinzi was previously approved by the FDA for the treatment of patients with metastatic urothelial cancer and for patients with unresectable, stage III non–small-cell lung cancer. The FDA granted durvalumab an orphan drug designation for this new indication.

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San Francisco, CA—Cholangiocarcinoma (CCA), a type of biliary tract cancer, is a rare malignancy, with no FDA-approved medications specifically for this type of cancer. The current standard first-line treatment for patients with locally advanced or metastatic CCA is a chemotherapy combination of gemcitabine and cisplatin.

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In January 2020, the American Society of Clinical Oncology (ASCO) issued a major update to its Patient-Centered Oncology Payment (PCOP) model, an alternative payment model “designed to support transformation in cancer care delivery and reimbursement while ensuring that patients with cancer have access to high-quality, high-value care,” according to a statement from ASCO.

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San Antonio, TX—The novel antibody– drug conjugate trastuzumab deruxtecan (Enhertu) achieved “unprecedented” objective response rates of 60.9%, a median duration of response of 14.8 months, and a median progression- free survival (PFS) of 16.4 months in heavily pretreated patients with HER2-positive metastatic breast cancer, according to the results of the phase 2 DESTINY-Breast01 trial. The disease control rate was 97% in these patients whose disease progressed while receiving HER2-targeted agents, such as trastuzumab (Herceptin), ado-trastuzumab emtansine (T-DM1; Kadcyla), or pertuzumab (Perjeta).
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San Francisco, CA—Platinum-based therapy represents a new standard of care in patients with pancreatic cancer and germline BRCA or PALB2 mutation, based on data reported at the 2020 Gastrointestinal Cancers Symposium. The findings were published simultaneously in the Journal of Clinical Oncology (O’Reilly EM, et al. J Clin Oncol. 2020 Jan 24. Epub ahead of print).

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San Francisco, CA—The combination of encorafenib (Braftovi) plus cetuximab (Erbitux), with or without binimetinib (Mektovi), improved the quality of life based on patient-reported assessments better than current standard of care in the treatment of patients with metastatic colorectal cancer (CRC) and BRAF V600E mutation, according to the BEACON CRC study, which was presented at the 2020 Gastrointestinal Cancers Symposium.

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