Abstract
Purpose
As a novel antiangiogenic multi-target tyrosine kinase inhibitor recently approved in China, anlotinib has exhibited promising anticancer efficacy and acceptable safety profile in the salvage treatment of small cell lung cancer (SCLC) in clinical trials. Here we retrospectively investigated the efficacy and safety of anlotinib as third- or further-line treatment in patients with refractory SCLC.
Patients and methods
A total of 40 patients with refractory SCLC treated with anlotinib monotherapy were included in this study. The clinicopathological data, treatment information, survival data and safety data were retrospectively collected. Survival curves were constructed using the Kaplan–Meier method. Univariate analysis was performed by log-rank testing.
Results
Altogether, 40 patients of extensive-stage SCLC or progressive limited-stage SCLC received anlotinib monotherapy as third- or further-line treatment from July 2018 to June 2020. Four patients achieved partial response (PR), 14 patients achieved stable disease (SD), no complete response (CR) was recorded, and 22 patients experienced progressive disease (PD). The disease control rate (DCR) was 45.0%. The median progression-free survival (PFS) was 3.0 months (95% CI 2.241–3.759), and the median overall survival (OS) was 7.8 months (95% CI 3.190–12.410). The common adverse effects (AEs) included hypertension, fatigue, anorexia, cough, rash and nausea. Grade 3 treatment-related AEs occurred in 3 (7.5%) patients. One patient interrupted anlotinib treatment due to repeated grade 1 epistaxis. Univariate analysis revealed that patients without liver metastases, previously treated with radiotherapy or with Eastern Cooperative Oncology Group (ECOG) scores of 0 or 1 had longer OS with anlotinib treatment. Cox regression analysis demonstrated that patients without liver metastases and patients with ECOG score ≤ 1 had longer PFS, while patients without liver metastases had longer OS.
Conclusion
Anlotinib is beneficial to refractory SCLC as third- or further-line treatment, especially in patients without liver metastasis and with better physical status. Related adverse effects are tolerable and manageable.
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Data availability
The data that support the findings of this study are available from the corresponding author upon reasonable request.
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Funding
This work was funded by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (81972864); Academic Promotion Program of Shandong First Medical University (2019RC002); Science and Technology Support Plan for Youth Innovation Teams of Universities in Shandong Province (2019KJL001); Science and Technology Plan of Jinan (201907113); Shandong Provincial Natural Science Foundation (ZR2020LZL018); Taishan Scholars Program (No. tsqn202103174).
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JSL and XM contributed conception and design of the study; XTG and LZ organized the database; XTG and BL performed the statistical analysis; XTG and JSL wrote the first draft of the manuscript, KH, LP and CHY reviewed and edited the manuscript. All authors contributed to manuscript revision, read and approved the submitted version.
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The Ethics Committee of Shandong Cancer Hospital (Shandong Province, China) approved this study. In this retrospective study, the privacy and personal information of all patients were protected, and all the procedure was performed in accordance with the Declaration of Helsinki.
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Gao, X., Peng, L., Zhang, L. et al. Real-world efficacy and safety of anlotinib as third- or further-line treatment in refractory small cell lung cancer. J Cancer Res Clin Oncol 148, 2661–2671 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00432-021-03848-4
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00432-021-03848-4