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| |  Breast Cancer Patients Achieve 16-Month Progression-Free Survival With Nab-Paclitaxel, Carboplatin, and Trastuzumab: Presented at ASCO By Ed Susman CHICAGO -- June 4, 2008 -- Patients fighting metastatic breast cancer achieved a 16-month progression-free survival when taking a combination treatment of nanoparticle albumin bound (nab)-paclitaxel, carboplatin, and trastuzumab, researchers reported here at the American Society of Clinical Oncology (ASCO) 44th Annual Meeting. In the study, Andrew Seidman, MD, Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center, New York, New York, and colleagues enrolled 32 women with metastatic breast cancer with normal left ventricular function whose tumours overexpressed the human epidermal growth factor 2 (HER2) gene. Patients initially were treated with nab-paclitaxel 100 mg/m2 weekly for 3 weeks in a 4-week cycle, carboplatin at the same dosing schedule until an area under the curve (AUC) 2 was achieved, and trastuzumab 2 mg/kg once weekly following a 4 m/m2 loading dose. Dr. Seidman said that 4 of 13 patients experienced hypersensitivity reactions to carboplatin, so the dosing was revised to 1 treatment monthly until AUC 6. He said 21 women received the initial dose schedule; 11 were treated with the carboplatin change. In his poster presentation on June 2, Dr. Seidman reported on 30 evaluable patients. Overall progression-free survival was 15.9 months and median response duration was 28 months. Two of the patients achieved a complete response to the treatment regimen and 14 patients achieved a documented partial response. Another 10 patients were able to stabilise their conditions. "That gave us a clinical benefit rate of 83% of our patients," he said. "Treatment continued in the absence of disease progression or unacceptable toxicity," Dr. Seidman said. "In the absence of progression at 6 cycles, chemotherapy could be discontinued and trastuzumab maintenance therapy continued at the discretion of the treating oncologist." Patients in the study had a mean age of 52 years (range, 26-76 years); more than three-quarters of the women were postmenopausal; about 81% were white and 12% were black; 97% of patients had a performance status of 0 or 1 at enrolment. "Both the activity and the favourable toxicity profile support continued exploration of this regimen in a larger population for first-line treatment of HER2-positive metastatic breast cancer," Dr. Seidman concluded. Funding for this study was provided by Abraxis BioScience.
[Presentation title: Phase II Study of Weekly Nab-Paclitaxel in Combination With Carboplatin and Trastuzumab as First-Line Therapy for Patients With HER2-Positive Metastatic Breast Cancer. Abstract 1047]
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