Osimertinib Plus SABR Appears Safe, Effective for Advanced EGFR-Mutant NSCLC

— The addition of SABR appears to provide PFS, OS benefit when considered against historical data

by Greg Laub, Director, Video, ľ��ֱ�� June 14, 2024

In this exclusive ľ��ֱ�� video, , co-director of the lung cancer and thoracic oncology program at City of Hope in Duarte, California, discusses the results and implications of a phase II study evaluating osimertinib (Tagrisso) and consolidative stereotactic ablative radiation (SABR) for the treatment of advanced EGFR-mutant non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC).

Findings from were presented at the recent American Society of Clinical Oncology (ASCO) meeting.

Following is a transcript of her remarks:

I'm talking today about our study that we did in collaboration with UT Southwestern, which is in patients with EGFR-mutant non-small cell lung cancer. They were treated with either osimertinib alone or osimertinib plus stereotactic ablative radiation therapy, which I will call SABR as an abbreviation.

So this study basically was founded on the basis that if we reduce the resistant cells, so the tumor burden, as soon as possible after maximum response to an EGFR tyrosine kinase inhibitor, patients will eventually benefit in the long run.

It's a small study that included 43 patients. They were all untreated, EGFR-mutant non-small cell lung cancer with metastatic disease, incurable disease. So patients, after 8 weeks of treatment of osimertinib, they would receive SABR to all sites of existing disease.

And actually when we compared the results on the historical control, which is basically progression-free survival of about 18 months in this patient population and overall survival about 38 months, we actually found that in the arm that received the osimertinib plus SABR, there was an improvement in both progression-free survival, which was about 32 months, and overall survival, which was 42 months.

So, we think, even if it's a limitation -- that it's a small study, that eventually this could be having an application in the future because the toxicity that we actually found was not significant. There was only 2% incidence of pneumonitis. So only one patient had pneumonitis, and 2% of other toxicities, such as hyponatremia, or skin toxicity, or diarrhea. So we think that this is an important study for us.

Greg Laub is the Senior Director of Video and currently leads the video and podcast production teams.