Tislelizumab improves overall survival vs. chemotherapy for esophageal squamous cell carcinoma
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Tislelizumab improved overall survival compared with investigator-chosen standard chemotherapy in patients with esophageal squamous cell carcinoma, according to data from a phase 3 study presented at ASCO21.
Further, as a second line treatment, tislelizumab had a more favorable safety profile than ICC.
"Based on this result, tislelizumab presents as the potential new standard of second line treatment option for patients with advanced or metastasized esophageal squamous cell cancer," Lin Shen, MD, vice president of Clinical Oncology at Beijing Cancer Hospital and Peking University and deputy director at Beijing Institute for Cancer Research, said.
For the phase 3 study, patients with advanced/unresectable or metastatic ESCC who did not respond to previous systemic treatments received either 200 mg of tislelizumab via IV each week for 3 weeks, or ICC.
The study comprised a global population of 512 patients (mean age, 62 years). The median follow-up for patients treated with tislelizumab was 8.5 months vs. 5.8 months for patients treated with ICC.
"Treatment with tislelizumab showed numerically favorable result in PFS, including in the 6-, 9- and the 12-month benchmark analysis," Shen said.
The researchers found a clinically significant improvement for patients treated with tislelizumab compared with patients treated with ICC. Patients treated with tislelizumab experienced a higher overall response rate, while instances of grade 3 treatment-caused adverse events were lower. Moreover, tislelizumab elicited a more durable response.
"The overall benefit was observed across predefined subgroups, including PDLY expression status, race and the regimen," Shen said.
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Shen, L et al. Abstract 4012. Presented at: ASCO Annual Meeting; 2021; June 4-8, 2021 (virtual meeting).
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