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Avelumab Plus Cetuximab for Advanced Cutaneous Squamous Cell Carcinoma
Juergen C. Becker, MD, PhD, German Cancer Consortium, Essen, Germany, discusses preliminary findings from the phase 2 AliCe study combining avelumab, a PD-L1 inhibitor, with cetuximab, an EGFR-inhibitor, for patients with advanced, unresectable cutaneous squamous cell carcinoma (cSCC).
Results found this combination exhibited high clinical activity and tolerable safety in this patient population.
Dr Becker presented these results at the 2023 ESMO Congress in Madrid, Spain.
Transcript:
Hi, I'm Jurgen Becker from the German Cancer Consortium in Essen, [Germany], and I'm here at ESMO 2023 in Madrid, [Spain]. I'd like to give you a little bit about our study, the AliCe study, which was a clinical trial testing the effect of therapy with an anti-PD-L1 antibody, avelumab, together with an anti-EGFR antibody, cetuximab, in the treatment of difficult-to-treat squamous cell carcinoma of the skin, which were either therapy-refractory patients or those patients having tumors in the peritoneal area.
We observed that both therapy-refractory patients were responding not as good as therapy-naive patients, but more important was that the patients with peritoneal squamous cell carcinoma, which are normally not responding to checkpoint inhibition, showed the same therapeutic effect as we see with patients with classical UV-associated squamous cell carcinoma.
This was a non-randomized phase 2 trial, and we hope that this data actually gets the interest into the pharma[ceutical] industry to have a trial in this rare and difficult-to-treat patient population, because this is really a medical need we need to address.
Source:
Becker JC, Schilling B, Leiter-Stoppke U, et al. A single arm phase II, multicenter trial to evaluate the clinical activity and safety of avelumab plus cetuximab in unresectable stage III or IV cutaneous squamous cell carcinoma: First results from the AliCe study. Presented at the 2023 ESMO Congress; October 20- 24, 2023; Madrid, Spain. Abstract 1087MO
