The Effectiveness of Maintenance Pharmacotherapies for Non-Small Cell Lung Cancer

Although current recommendations for the treatment of advanced non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) include a maximum of six cycles of platinum-based combination therapy as a first-line approach, most patients experience progression within 3–4 months. Therefore, a new treatment strategy, maintenance therapy, has been proposed, and several large randomized prospective controlled trials have shown benefits with maintenance therapy. Maintenance therapy can be classified as either continuation maintenance, which is defined as a prolongation of a part of the first-line chemotherapy or molecularly targeted agent until progression, or switch-maintenance, which is defined as the administration of a different cytotoxic chemotherapy or molecularly targeted agent immediately after induction therapy. In this article, recent results from large randomized phase III trials regarding maintenance therapy are reviewed in order to evaluate the role of maintenance therapy in NSCLC

Acquired resistance to anti-EGFR mAb ICR62 in cancer cells is accompanied by an increased EGFR expression, HER-2/HER-3 signalling and sensitivity to pan HER blockers

Our results provide a novel mechanistic insight into the development of acquired resistance to EGFR antibody-based therapy in colorectal cancer cells and justify further investigations on the therapeutic benefits of pan-HER family inhibitors in the treatment of colorectal cancer patients once acquired resistance to EGFR antibody-based therapy is developed

Maintenance therapy in NSCLC: why? To whom? Which agent?

Maintenance therapy is emerging as a treatment strategy in the management of advanced non small cell lung cancer (NSCLC). Initial trials addressing the question of duration of combination chemotherapy failed to show any overall survival benefit for the prolonged administration over a fixed number of cycles with an increased risk for cumulative toxicity. Nowadays several agents with different ways of administration and a different pattern of toxicity have been formally investigated in the maintenance setting. Maintenance strategies include continuing with an agent already present in the induction regimen or switching to a different one. Taking into consideration that no comparative trials of maintenance with different chemotherapy drugs or targeted agents have been conducted, the choice and the duration of maintenance agents is largely empirical. Furthermore, it is still unknown and it remains an open question if this approach needs to be proposed to every patient in the case of partial/complete response or stable disease after the induction therapy. Here, we critically review available data on maintenance treatment, discussing the possibility to tailor the right treatment to the right patient, in an attempt to optimize costs and benefits of an ever-growing panel of different treatment options