001); indeed, although even EGFR M- click here patients derive a small, but statistically significant, benefit in PFS from erlotinib maintenance Selleckchem JQ-EZ-05 (HR: 0.78, 95% CI: 0.63-0.96, p = 0.0185), the PFS gain of EGFR M+ patients is exceptionally wide (HR: 0.10, 95% CI: 0.04-0.25, p < 0.0001). The potential benefits of the inclusion of erlotinib in the maintenance treatment of EGFR M+ patients were consistent in the ATLAS
trial, where erlotinib was combined with bevacizumab. However, at the moment there are no survival data and no further analyses of OS are planned, due to loss of patients to follow up [32]. In routine clinical practice obtaining information on EGFR mutational status is not always easy and time-consuming, being not exceptional that such information becomes available Lenvatinib datasheet only when the patient is already receiving a standard first-line chemotherapy treatment: should this be the case, EGFR M+ patients have now the option to receive TKI right after the induction. The impact of erlotinib maintenance on OS of EGFR M+ patients, however,
is currently uncertain. Survival data in EGFR M+ patients included in SATURN trial are not yet mature although the low number of EGFR M+ patients and the shape of the survival curves, make it unlikely that a statistically significant benefit will become apparent with longer follow up. It is true that EGFR TKI are effective in advanced NSCLC
even when administered late in the course of the disease, but recent data document that about 50% of NSCLC patients treated with EGFR-TKIs will develop resistance-inducing EGFR mutations (such as the T790M) implying the possibility that resistant clones may expand as disease progresses [40–42]. Talking about costs in this specific context a recent retrospective cost-effectiveness analysis by Bradbury et al. reported the cost per year of life gained being not the most favorable in patients with sensitizing mutations in the EGFR Non-specific serine/threonine protein kinase gene. This was because these patients derived relatively greater benefit and stayed on treatment longer, thereby incurring considerably higher drug acquisition costs [43]. Besides EGFR mutations, histology represents a potentially crucial decision factor for the choice of specific maintenance agents. Currently, no direct comparisons between different agents in histology-selected subgroups of patients have been reported. In the JMEN trial, the benefit of maintenance pemetrexed is clearly confined to patients with non-squamous histology: indeed, in patients with squamous histology OS on pemetrexed maintenance was indistinguishable from that on placebo; conversely, in non-squamous patients pemetrexed maintenance resulted in a reduction of the risk of death of approximately 30% and prolonged median survival from 10.3 to 15.5 months [27].