Apatinib found effective to treat elderly patients with gastric cancer

The findings of an open-label, single-arm, phase II study published in Onco Targets and Therapy reported oral apatinib to be an effective agent with good tolerability for elderly people suffering from unresectable advanced or metastatic gastric cancer who have received at least 1^st line chemotherapy.

Dengfeng Ren et al. aimed to prospectively explore apatinib’s safety and efficacy for elderly people (aged ≥60 years) with gastric cancer, who experienced advancement to at least one or more lines of chemotherapy. This multicenter study recruited 48 participants receiving apatinib in an oral dose of 500 mg or 250 mg daily as per the research physicians’ decision.

Progression-free survival was the major outcome, while disease control rate, safety, objective response rate, and overall survival were the secondary outcomes. In total, 27 people (56.3%) initiated therapy with a starting dose of 500 mg and 21 people (43.7%) with a dose of 250 mg. The median progression-free survival, overall survival, objective response rate and disease control rate is shown in Table 1:

Table 1: Primary and Secondary endpoints

Hypertension (47.9%), proteinuria (29.2%), fatigue (58.3%), neutropenia (20.8%), abdominal pain (33.3%), and leukopenia (22.9%) were the commonly noted adverse effects. The major grade III/IV toxicity was hypertension (22.9%). Thus, apatinib appears to be beneficial for the management of people with gastric cancer.

Also read, Pembrolizumab granted FDA accelerated approval for HER2-positive gastric cancer.