Medication Use and Clinical Outcomes by the Dutch Institute for Clinical Auditing Medicines Program: Quantitative Analysis

BACKGROUND: The Dutch Institute for Clinical Auditing (DICA) Medicines Program was set up in September 2018 to evaluate expensive medicine use in daily practice in terms of real-world effectiveness using only existing data sources. OBJECTIVE: The aim of this study is to describe the potential of the addition of declaration data to quality registries to provide participating centers with benchmark information about the use of medicines and outcomes among patients. METHODS: A total of 3 national population-based registries were linked to clinical and financial data from the hospital pharmacy, the Dutch diagnosis treatment combinations information system including in-hospital activities, and survival data from health care insurers. The first results of the real-world data (RWD) linkage are presented using descriptive statistics to assess patient, tumor, and treatment characteristics. Time-to-next-treatment (TTNT) and overall survival (OS) were estimated using the Kaplan-Meier method. RESULTS: A total of 21 Dutch hospitals participated in the DICA Medicines Program, which included 7412 patients with colorectal cancer, 1981 patients with metastasized colon cancer, 3860 patients with lung cancer, 1253 patients with metastasized breast cancer, and 7564 patients with rheumatic disease. The data were used for hospital benchmarking to gain insights into medication use in specific patient populations, treatment information, clinical outcomes, and costs. Detailed treatment information (duration and treatment steps) led to insights into differences between hospitals in daily clinical practices. Furthermore, exploratory analyses on clinical outcomes (TTNT and OS) were possible. CONCLUSIONS: The DICA Medicines Program shows that it is possible to gather and link RWD about medicines to 4 disease-specific population-based registries. Since these RWD became available with minimal registration burden and effort for hospitals, this method can be explored in other population-based registries to evaluate real-world efficacy

Adjuvant treatment for melanoma in clinical practice - Trial versus reality

Background: Little is known about outcomes of adjuvant-treated melanoma patients beyond the clinical trial setting. Since 2019, adjuvant-treated melanoma patients have been registered in the DMTR, a population-based registry to monitor the quality and safety of melanoma care in the Netherlands. This study aims to describe treatment patterns, relapse, and toxicity rates of adjuvant-treated melanoma patients beyond the clinical trial setting. Methods: Analyses were performed on adjuvant-treated melanoma patients included in the DMTR. Descriptive statistics were used to analyse patient-, and treatment characteristics. A baseline registration completeness analysis was performed, and an analysis on trial eligibility in clinical practice patients. Recurrence-free survival (RFS) at 12-months was estimated with the Kaplan-Meier method. Results: A total of 641 patients were treated with adjuvant anti-PD-1 therapy. RFS at 12-months was 70.6% (95% CI, 66.9-74.6) with a median follow-up of 12.8 months. Sex, stage of disease and Breslow thickness were associated with a higher hazard for RFS. Eighteen per cent of the anti-PD-1-treated patients developed grade >= 3 toxicity. Sixty-one per cent of patients prematurely discontinued anti-PD-1 therapy. Conclusion: Adjuvant anti-PD-1 treatment of resected stage III/IV melanoma in daily practice showed slightly higher toxicity rates and more frequent premature discontinuation but similar RFS rates compared to trials. (C) 2021 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd

Postapproval trials versus patient registries:comparability of advanced melanoma patients with brain metastases

Postapproval trials and patient registries have their pros and cons in the generation of postapproval data. No direct comparison between clinical outcomes of these data sources currently exists for advanced melanoma patients. We aimed to investigate whether a patient registry can complement or even replace postapproval trials. Postapproval single-arm clinical trial data from the Medicines Evaluation Board and real-world data from the Dutch Melanoma Treatment Registry were used. The study population consisted of advanced melanoma patients with brain metastases treated with targeted therapies (BRAF- or BRAF-MEK inhibitors) in the first line. A Cox hazard regression model and a propensity score matching (PSM) model were used to compare the two patient populations. Compared to patients treated in postapproval trials (n = 467), real-world patients (n = 602) had significantly higher age, higher ECOG performance status, more often ≥3 organ involvement and more symptomatic brain metastases. Lactate dehydrogenase levels were similar between both groups. The unadjusted median overall survival (mOS) in postapproval clinical trial patients was 8.7 (95% CI, 8.1-10.4) months compared to 7.2 (95% CI, 6.5-7.7) months (P < 0.01) in real-world patients. With the Cox hazard regression model, survival was adjusted for prognostic factors, which led to a statistically insignificant difference in mOS for trial and real-world patients of 8.7 (95% CI, 7.9-10.4) months compared to 7.3 (95% CI, 6.3-7.9) months, respectively. The PSM model resulted in 310 matched patients with similar survival (P = 0.9). Clinical outcomes of both data sources were similar. Registries could be a complementary data source to postapproval clinical trials to establish information on clinical outcomes in specific subpopulations

Long-term survival of patients with advanced melanoma treated with BRAF-MEK inhibitors

Recent results of patients with advanced melanoma treated with first-line BRAF-MEK inhibitors in clinical trials showed 5-year survival in one-third of patients with a median overall survival (OS) of more than 2 years. This study aimed to investigate these patients' real-world survival and identify the characteristics of long-term survivors. The study population consisted of patients with advanced cutaneous melanoma with a BRAF-V600 mutated tumor who were treated with first-line BRAF-MEK inhibitors between 2013 and 2017. Long-term survival was defined as a minimum OS of 2 years from start therapy. The median progression-free survival (mPFS) and median OS (mOS) of real-world patients ( n = 435) were respectively 8.0 (95% CI, 6.8-9.4) and 11.7 (95% CI, 10.3-13.5) months. Two-year survival was reached by 28% of the patients, 22% reached 3-year survival and 19% reached 4-year survival. Real-world patients often had brain metastases (41%), stage IV M1c disease (87%), ECOG PS ≥2 (21%), ≥3 organ sites (62%) and elevated LDH of ≥250 U/I (49%). Trial-eligible real-world patients had an mOS of 17.9 months. Patients surviving more than 2 years ( n = 116) more often had an ECOG PS ≤1 (83%), normal LDH (60%), no brain metastases (60%), no liver metastases (63%) and <3 organ sites (60%). Long-term survival of real-world patients treated with first-line BRAF-MEK inhibitors is significantly lower than that of trial patients, which is probably explained by poorer baseline characteristics of patients treated in daily practice. Long-term survivors generally had more favorable characteristics with regard to age, LDH level and metastatic sites, compared to patients not reaching long-term survival

Real-world outcomes of advanced melanoma patients not represented in phase III trials

The aim was to provide evidence on systemically treated patients with advanced melanoma not represented in phase III trials to support clinical decision-making. Analysis were performed on advanced melanoma patients diagnosed between 2014 and 2017 in the Netherlands, treated with immune- or targeted therapy, who met ≥1 trial exclusion criteria. These criteria were derived from the KEYNOTE-006 and CHECKMATE-067/-066 phase III trials. Prognostic importance of factors associated with overall survival (OS) was assessed with the Kaplan-Meier method, Cox models, predicted OS probabilities of prognostic subgroups and a conditional inference survival tree (CIST). A nationwide population-based registry was used as data source. Of 2536 systemically treated patients with advanced melanoma, 1004 (40%) patients were ineligible for phase IIII trials. Ineligible patients had a poorer median OS (mOS) compared to eligible patients (8.8 vs 23 months). Eligibility criteria strongly associated with OS in systemically treated ineligible patients were Eastern Cooperative Oncology Group Performance Score (ECOG PS) ≥2, brain metastases (BM) and lactate dehydrogenase (LDH) of >500 U/L. Patients with ECOG PS of ≥2 with or without symptomatic BM had a predicted mOS of 6.5 and 11.3 months and a 3-year survival probability of 9.3% and 23.6%, respectively. The CIST showed the strongest prognostic covariate for survival was LDH, followed by ECOG PS. The prognosis of patients with LDH of >500 U/L is poor, but long-term survival is possible. The prognosis of ineligible patients with advanced melanoma in real-world was very heterogeneous and highly dependent on LDH value, ECOG PS and symptomatic BM

Postapproval trials versus patient registries: comparability of advanced melanoma patients with brain metastases

Postapproval trials and patient registries have their pros and cons in the generation of postapproval data. No direct comparison between clinical outcomes of these data sources currently exists for advanced melanoma patients. We aimed to investigate whether a patient registry can complement or even replace postapproval trials. Postapproval single-arm clinical trial data from the Medicines Evaluation Board and real-world data from the Dutch Melanoma Treatment Registry were used. The study population consisted of advanced melanoma patients with brain metastases treated with targeted therapies (BRAF- or BRAF-MEK inhibitors) in the first line. A Cox hazard regression model and a propensity score matching (PSM) model were used to compare the two patient populations. Compared to patients treated in postapproval trials (n = 467), real-world patients (n = 602) had significantly higher age, higher ECOG performance status, more often ≥3 organ involvement and more symptomatic brain metastases. Lactate dehydrogenase levels were similar between both groups. The unadjusted median overall survival (mOS) in postapproval clinical trial patients was 8.7 (95% CI, 8.1-10.4) months compared to 7.2 (95% CI, 6.5-7.7) months (P < 0.01) in real-world patients. With the Cox hazard regression model, survival was adjusted for prognostic factors, which led to a statistically insignificant difference in mOS for trial and real-world patients of 8.7 (95% CI, 7.9-10.4) months compared to 7.3 (95% CI, 6.3-7.9) months, respectively. The PSM model resulted in 310 matched patients with similar survival (P = 0.9). Clinical outcomes of both data sources were similar. Registries could be a complem

Amplification and overexpression of genes in 17p11.2 ~ p12 in osteosarcoma

We summarize and briefly discuss recent findings with respect to the amplification and overexpression of candidate oncogenes in 17p11.2 ~p12 in high-grade osteosarcomas. Amplification of this region occurs in about 25% of cases. The amplification profiles are often complex and suggest the involvement of more than one oncogene. The 17p11.2 ~ p12 region harbors many low-copy repeats (LCRs). We propose LCR-mediated repeated duplication by mitotic nonallelic homologous recombination as mechanism for the generation of the amplifications in this region. Genes PMP22 and COPS3 and three expressed sequence tags from within 17p11.2 ~ p12 have been found to be frequently overexpressed and consistently overexpressed after amplification, which identifies them as candidate oncogenes in this region. Overexpression of COPS3 has been linked to TP53 protein degradation and, being equivalent to TP53 mutation, the induction of genomic instability, which frequently occurs in high-grade osteosarcoma. These findings may serve as a framework for future work aimed to identify the causative oncogenes in 17p11.2 ~p12, to clarify the mechanism of their amplification, and to determine their importance in osteosarcoma tumorigenesi

Infrequent but high-level amplification of 17p11.2 approximately p12 in human glioma

We reported previously the amplification of DNA markers in 17p12 in 3 of 60 high-grade gliomas. To detect additional cases, we screened in total 104 gliomas of various types and grades by Southern blot analysis using marker 745R, which is within the commonly amplified region. However, no other caseswith significant amplification (amplification level > 4) were found. To investigate in detail the extent of the amplifications in the three tumors, which were all glioblastomas, we determined 17p11.2 approximately p12 amplification profiles by semiquantitative polymerase chain reaction using 15 microsatellite markers and seven candidate genes. Distinct and high-level amplifications, with maximum levels ranging from 15 to 38, were found in these tumors. The 0.8 Mb-region between D17S1525 and MAP2K4 in 17p12 proved to be commonly amplified in these tumors. In one tumor, a heterogeneous distribution of the amplification in 17p12 was found, suggesting that it is a late event during glioma tumorigenesis. Another tumor showed additional high-level amplification of PMP22 and D17S1843 in 17p11.2. From the high-level amplifications we conclude that at least one, but possibly more, putative oncogenes are present in 17p11.2 approximately p12 whose amplifications and/or overexpressions contribute to glioma tumorigenesi

Overexpression through amplification of genes in chromosome region 17p11.2 approximately p12 in high-grade osteosarcoma

Osteosarcomas are malignant tumors of the bone that are characterized by complex genetic changes, including loss and amplification of chromosome regions. Region 17p11.2 approximately p12 is frequently found to be amplified in this tumor, suggesting the presence of an oncogene (or oncogenes) important in osteosarcoma tumorigenesis. We had previously determined amplification profiles for this region. Reasoning that amplification of a causative oncogene in a tumor should result in increased expression of that gene, we have now determined the expression status of genes and expressed sequence tags (ESTs) in 17p11.2 approximately p12. We constructed a 17p11.2 approximately p12-specific macroarray containing 40 genes and 21 ESTs from this region, which was used for expression profiling of 11 osteosarcoma samples (9 tumors and 2 cell lines) and of normal human osteoblasts. Compared to normal osteoblasts, genes with at least threefold increased expression were considered to be overexpressed in the tumor. Genes PMP22 and COPS3, EST AA126939 (encoding part of the hypothetical protein FLJ20343), and two anonymous ESTs (AA918483 and R02360) were found to be most consistently overexpressed after amplification. By real-time reverse transcriptase polymerase chain reaction, we could confirm the overexpression status of PMP22 and COPS3 but not of FLJ20343. We conclude that PMP22 and COPS3, and possibly also the three ESTs, are candidate amplification targets in 17p11.2 approximately p12 in osteosarcom