ADVERTISEMENT
Spartalizumab Shows Promise in Patients With Advanced/Metastatic Anaplastic Thyroid Cancer
Spartalizumab showed promising clinical activity and a good safety profile in patients with aggressive anaplastic thyroid carcinoma, according to findings from a phase 1/2 study (J Clin Oncol. 2020 May 4. Epub ahead of print).
“Anaplastic thyroid carcinoma is an aggressive malignancy that is almost always fatal and lacks effective systemic treatment options for patients with BRAF-wild type disease,” wrote Jaume Capdevila, MD, PhD, Medical Oncology Department, Gastrointestinal and Endocrine Tumor Unit, Vall d’Hebron University Hospital, Barcelona, Spain, and colleagues, who evaluated the use of spartalizumab in patients with locally advanced and/or metastatic anaplastic thyroid cancer.
A total of 42 patients were enrolled in the study and given spartalizumab 400 mg once every 4 weeks, the majority of whom had baseline tumor biopsies revealing positivity for PD-L1 expression.
The overall response rate, which was assessed as per RECIST v1.1, was 19%, and included 3 and 5 patients with complete and partial responses, respectively. Of note, patients had higher rates of response if they were PD-L1–positive (29%) versus PD-L1–negative (0%).
A subset of patients with PD-L1 expression ≥50% (6/17; 35%) had the highest rate of response.
Responses were observed and durable in patients with and without BRAF mutations, with a 1-year survival of 52.1% in the PD-L1–positive patients.
According to Dr Capdevila et al, adverse events were consistent with those previously observed with PD-1 blockade, with diarrhea (12%), pruritus (12%), fatigue (7%), and pyrexia (7%) being the most frequently reported treatment-related adverse events.
“To our knowledge, this is the first clinical trial to show responsiveness of anaplastic thyroid carcinoma to PD-1 blockade,” Dr Capdevila et al concluded.—Hina M. Porcelli
