FRIDAY, May 30 (HealthDay News) -- Treatment for advanced pancreatic cancer with gemcitabine plus axitinib was associated with a modest but non-statistically significant gain in overall survival compared to gemcitabine alone, according to results from a phase II study published online May 30 in The Lancet.
Jean-Philippe Spano, M.D., of the Hopital de la Pitie Salpetriere in Paris, France, and colleagues analyzed data from 103 patients with unresectable, locally advanced or metastatic pancreatic cancer who were randomized to gemcitabine with axitinib (an inhibitor of vascular endothelial growth factor receptors 1, 2 and 3) or gemcitabine alone. The primary endpoint was overall survival.
Median overall survival with the combination was 6.9 months compared to 5.6 months with gemcitabine alone, the researchers report. The hazard ratio, adjusted for stratification factors, for survival with the combination compared to survival with gemcitabine alone was 0.71. Neither improvement was statistically significant, the report indicates.
"An ongoing phase III trial will more definitively determine whether axitinib improves survival," writes Philip A. Philip, M.D., Ph.D., of the Karmanos Cancer Center in Detroit, in an accompanying commentary. "Angiogenesis remains a valid target to be systematically studied in pancreatic cancer."
The study was funded by Pfizer, and Spano and several co-authors disclosed financial relationships with Pfizer and/or other pharmaceutical companies.
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