A new, international study found that the combination of two drugs delays disease progression for patients with advanced non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC).
Results from the Phase III "ATLAS" trial were presented today by Dr. Vincent Miller of Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center (MSKCC) at the American Society of Clinical Oncology Annual Meeting.
The goal of the study was to determine whether adding erlotinib (Tarceva), a targeted agent, to maintenance therapy with bevacizumab (Avastin), an agent commonly used as a component of treatment for advanced NSCLC would delay disease progression. Maintenance therapy involves using one or more agents of a chemotherapy regimen, but not the entire regimen, to delay disease progression and possibly improve survival after patients have previously received stronger standard chemotherapy, which can have significant side effects.
"This is the first study to show the addition of erlotinib to maintenance therapy prolongs progression-free survival in patients with advanced non-small cell lung cancer," said Dr. Miller, a thoracic oncologist at MSKCC and one of the study's lead authors. "Knowing which patients will get the greatest benefit from this combination, based on the identification of biomarkers, will be an important next step in this research," Dr. Miller added.