Off-label targeted cancer drugs fail in first randomized trial

A Mullard - Nature Reviews Drug Discovery, 2015 - go.gale.com
A Mullard
Nature Reviews Drug Discovery, 2015go.gale.com
Encouraged by a growing arsenal of targeted cancer drugs and the ability to molecularly
profile tumours, oncologists are increasingly using targeted drugs off-label to treat patients.
Up to 30% of cancer drug use is off-label. A first randomized trial of off-label targeted drugs
versus chemotherapy has now shown that this personalized approach does not benefit
patients (Lancet 2 Sep 2015 [epub ahead of print]).Christophe Le Tourneau, an oncologist at
the Institut Curie in Paris, France, and the lead author of the study, randomized 195 patients …
Encouraged by a growing arsenal of targeted cancer drugs and the ability to molecularly profile tumours, oncologists are increasingly using targeted drugs off-label to treat patients. Up to 30% of cancer drug use is off-label. A first randomized trial of off-label targeted drugs versus chemotherapy has now shown that this personalized approach does not benefit patients (Lancet 2 Sep 2015 [epub ahead of print]).
Christophe Le Tourneau, an oncologist at the Institut Curie in Paris, France, and the lead author of the study, randomized 195 patients with'actionable'abnormalities in a range of cancers to one of two arms: treatment with a potentially relevant, targeted drug, or treatment with chemotherapy. Progression-free survival was 2.3 months in the experimental personalized-treatment arm, non-significantly different from the 2.0 months on chemotherapy. There was a non-significant trend towards increased toxicity with the targeted drugs.
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