Publication:

Effect of ramucirumab on progression free survival and quality of life in conventional drug resistant or metastatic non-squamous variant of non-small cell lung cancers: a pilot study

Background Lung cancer is the leading cause of cancer-related death in India overall with the lowest five-year survival rate. Early detection of lung cancer is challenging due to the absence of usual clinical signs.

Methods This non-randomised, single-arm, retrospective and prospective, pilot observational study enrolled 20 adult patients who have histologically or cytologically confirmed metastatic/drug-resistant/relapsed non-squamous NSCLC, having measurable disease at the time of study entry as defined by the response evaluation criteria in solid tumours (RECIST) with an Eastern cooperative oncology group (ECOG)  performance status score of 0 to 2 and adequate organ function are eligible to participate in the study.

Results The survival rate is exceedingly poor in the case of metastatic non-small cell lung cancer. The primary mass shrunk in size as the sum of the largest diameters (SLD) fell by a modest 12.22% up to the third chemotherapy cycle and a further 9.78% up to the sixth chemotherapy cycle. The progression-free survival duration was found 250.82 days, or roughly 8.33 months, and the overall survival (OS) period was 459 days, or approximately 15.3 months. Overall, the mean trial outcome index increased by 9.31% with additional chemotherapy cycles, while FACT-L increased by a comparable 24.25 percent.

Conclusions Angiogenesis inhibitors, due to their novel mechanism of action, provide new therapeutic options for metastatic NSCLC. Despite our inability to draw statistically significant conclusions from these encouraging data, our experience with ramucirumab has been truly pleasant thus far.