Erlotinib as Maintenance Therapy for Advanced Non–Small-Cell Lung Cancer

The drug had a significant survival advantage over placebo, but the financial cost relative to the absolute size of the benefit should be considered.

The preferred initial treatment for advanced non–small-cell lung cancer (NSCLC) is 4 to 6 cycles of platinum-based doublet chemotherapy. For maintenance therapy, continued cycles of bevacizumab have been associated with improved survival in patients who received this drug as part of their initial regimen (JW Oncol Hematol Jan 12 2007), early docetaxel has been associated with borderline improvement in survival (JW Oncol Hematol Mar 17 2009), and early pemetrexed has been associated with a survival advantage in patients with nonsquamous histology (JW Oncol Hematol Jul 22 2008).

Investigators now report data from an industry-sponsored, phase III maintenance study of erlotinib, an inhibitor of the epidermal growth factor receptor (EGFR). In thi…

Reviewing Author

Lin-Chi Chen, MD, PhD