Everolimus Shows Potential In Tough-to-Treat Gastric Cancer

ORLANDO – Everolimus monotherapy shows promising activity and is generally well tolerated in patients with metastatic gastric cancer who have undergone prior anticancer therapy, according to phase 2 results reported by Japanese researchers at the American Society of Clinical Oncology’s 2010 Gastrointestinal Cancers Symposium (ASCO GI).

Hiroya Takiuchi, MD, with Osaka Medical College, presented results in 53 patients with metastatic gastric cancer who received a daily 10 mg dose oral everolimus. All patients had failed up to two prior chemotherapy regimens.

Everolimus is an oral inhibitor of mammalian target of rapamycin (mTOR) that has demonstrated anticancer activity in preclinical cellular and animal models and also in patients with advanced gastric cancer.

“Because of poor long-term outcomes with surgery and standard chemotherapy management of advanced gastric cancer, it is important to study new targeted agents in this population,” Dr. Takiuchi said.

Oral everolimus was administered in continuous 28-day cycles until the patient developed progressive disease or unacceptable toxicity or elected to withdraw from the study for any other reason, with a dose reduction permitted for tolerability.

The primary study endpoint was disease control rate (DCR), defined as the proportion of patients with complete response, partial response or stable disease as the best overall response. Read more