Safety and efficacy of first-line bevacizumab with chemotherapy in Asian patients with advanced nonsquamous NSCLC: results from the phase IV MO19390 (SAiL) study.

INTRODUCTION: First-line treatment with bevacizumab combined with chemotherapy has been shown to improve outcomes in patients with advanced, nonsquamous non-small cell lung cancer (NSNSCLC) in phase III clinical trials. SAiL (MO19390), an open-label, multicenter, single-arm study, evaluated the safety and efficacy of first-line bevacizumab-based treatment in clinical practice. This report presents the results of a preplanned subanalysis of Asian patients enrolled in SAiL.

METHODS: Patients with untreated, locally advanced, metastatic or recurrent NSNSCLC received bevacizumab 7.5 or 15 mg/kg every 3 weeks plus chemotherapy for up to six cycles, followed by single-agent bevacizumab until disease progression. Eligibility criteria for SAiL permitted enrolment of a broad patient population. The primary end point was safety; secondary end points included time to disease progression and overall survival.

RESULTS: The Asian intent-to-treat population comprised 314 of the 2212 patients enrolled in the SAiL trial. In the Asian subanalysis, patients received a median of nine cycles of bevacizumab, and the median follow-up was 16.4 months. The incidence of clinically significant adverse events (grade ≥3) of special interest was relatively low in this population (15.6% overall); proteinuria (7.6%), hypertension (4.8%), and bleeding (2.5%) were the most common. A total of five adverse events related to bevacizumab were reported as grade 5. Disease control rate was 94.1%, median time to disease progression was 8.3 months, and median overall survival was 18.9 months.

CONCLUSIONS: The safety and efficacy of first-line bevacizumab-based treatment in Asian patients with advanced NSNSCLC is consistent with that demonstrated in phase III studies and in the overall SAiL population. There were no new safety signals.