Merck has recently published a press release about the final analysis of the phase III trial KEYNOTE-240 (“type”:”clinical-trial”,”attrs”:”text”:”NCT02702401″,”term_id”:”NCT02702401″NCT02702401) evaluating pembrolizumab placebo while second-line treatment in European population; even though co-primary endpoints OS and PFS were improved, these differences did not meet the statistical significance

Merck has recently published a press release about the final analysis of the phase III trial KEYNOTE-240 (“type”:”clinical-trial”,”attrs”:”text”:”NCT02702401″,”term_id”:”NCT02702401″NCT02702401) evaluating pembrolizumab placebo while second-line treatment in European population; even though co-primary endpoints OS and PFS were improved, these differences did not meet the statistical significance.56 Ongoing and long term trials Final considerations about the role of anti-PD-1 monotherapy in HCC will be drawn as soon as additional RCTs will be completed; the results of the CheckMate-459 and the BGB-A317-301 tests (nivolumab or tislelizumab compared with sorafenib in the first-line establishing, “type”:”clinical-trial”,”attrs”:”text”:”NCT02576509″,”term_id”:”NCT02576509″NCT02576509, “type”:”clinical-trial”,”attrs”:”text”:”NCT03412773″,”term_id”:”NCT03412773″NCT03412773) and of the KEYNOTE 394 (pembrolizumab placebo as second-line establishing in Asian human population, “type”:”clinical-trial”,”attrs”:”text”:”NCT03062358″,”term_id”:”NCT03062358″NCT03062358) are eagerly awaited. In addition, additional strategies are being pursued to maximize the potential of immunotherapy; in particular, some tests are exploring the combination of anti-PD-1/PD-L1 with TKIs, anti-VEGF, or anti-CTLA-4. Eastern Cooperative Oncology Group (ECOG) overall performance status (PS) (0 1). As for the phase II study, qualified individuals must have a BCLC stage B or C not amenable to locoregional treatments, a Child-Pugh A, and they had to be previously treated with sorafenib in first-line treatment. To select a study human population that could more likely tolerate regorafenib, individuals needed to be sorafenib-tolerant, meaning that they must have received 400 mg of sorafenib daily for at least 20 of the 28 days preceding discontinuation. As a consequence, all the individuals enrolled in the RESORCE trial experienced discontinued sorafenib because of disease progression. The drug was administered in the recommended dosing routine of 160 mg once daily in repeating cycles of 3 weeks on treatment followed by 1 week off treatment and the treatment needed to be initiated within 10 weeks of sorafenib discontinuation. After a median follow-up of 7 weeks, the benefit of regorafenib treatment was consistent for main and secondary endpoints and in all prespecified subgroup analyses. Namely, mOS was 10.6 months with regorafenib and 7.8 weeks with placebo (HR 0.63; 95% CI: 0.50C0.79; 36%; 10%) and discontinuation due to drug-related adverse events (10 4%); however, no difference in grade 5 adverse events was recorded. HR-QoL was assessed using FACT-G, FACT-Hep, EQ-5D, and EQ-VAS questionnaires; globally, the scores were similar between the groups except for the FACT-Hep total score that favored placebo (19.2 months of sorafenib-placebo, and that the survival benefit is independent of the pattern of the disease progression during previous sorafenib treatment and of PSI-7409 their last sorafenib dose (800 or 800 mg/day time).26 The development of new distant metastases or vascular invasion was confirmed to be associated with worse survival irrespective of treatment.27 Much like previous observation with sorafenib, also for regorafenib treatment the early onset of dermatological toxicity correlates with better end result.28 As for molecular biomarkers, regorafenib benefit is independent of baseline AFP and cMET protein levels that are on the contrary negative prognostic factors.29 Initial evidence suggests that some single-nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) assessed in the RESORCE population may have a prognostic and predictive effect: however, to date, no predictive molecular biomarker of regorafenib benefit has been established.30 Cabozantinib Cabozantinib is an oral multitarget TKI that was initially identified PSI-7409 as a potent dual inhibitor of VEGFR-2 and c-MET. Its target profile also includes the inhibition of VEGFR-1 and 3, AXL, RET, FLT3, and Tie up-2. It is important to point out that both MET and AXL overexpression has a bad prognostic impact and that MET might be induced by sorafenib treatment and may be a mechanism of resistance.31,32 The 1st clinical experience of cabozantinib in HCC involved 41 individuals (19 sorafenib na?ve, 22 sorafenib pretreated) enrolled in PSI-7409 1 of the 9 cohorts of a phase II randomized discontinuation trial.33,34 Individuals received a 12-week lead-in treatment with 100 mg per day of cabozantinib. After restaging, individuals with stable disease (SD) were randomized to cabozantinib or placebo, individuals with a partial response (PR) could continue PSI-7409 open-label cabozantinib treatment, and individuals with progressive disease (PD) at or before week 12 permanently discontinued treatment. The primary endpoint of the lead-in PSI-7409 phase was ORR at week 12, and the primary endpoint of the randomized phase was PFS. Randomization was halted before the preplanned accrual was reached due to initial efficacy results. In the HCC cohort, cabozantinib shown a week-12-ORR of 5% and a week-12-DCR of 66%. Among the individuals who experienced SD at week 12 (n=22), 12 individuals were randomized to placebo and 10 to cabozantinib. With the limitation of this small sample size, no significant difference in PFS was observed between the two organizations. In the overall human population of 41 treated individuals, mPFS from the start of the study was 5.2 months and mOS 11.5 months. The most frequent adverse events (diarrhea, weight loss, and HFSR) were mainly slight to moderate. Based on these preliminary signals of IL7 medical activity, a phase III, randomized, double-blind, controlled trial comparing.