Effects of adding necitumumab to first-line chemotherapy in patients with stage IV non-small-cell lung cancer: Meta-analysis

Abstract

© The Author(s) 2019. Introduction: Almost half of patients with non-small-cell lung cancer (NSCLC) are diagnosed at an advanced stage. Our aim was to assess the effects of adding necitumumab to chemotherapy in patients with stage IV NSCLC. Material and methods: A comprehensive literature search was performed according to pre-specified inclusion and exclusion criteria. Data on overall survival, progression-free survival, objective response rate and adverse events were extracted. A meta-analysis was performed to obtain pooled hazard ratios (HR) and corresponding 95% confidence intervals (CI) for time-to-event data and pooled odds ratio (OR) with 95% CI for dichotomous outcomes. Results: The meta-analysis included four randomized clinical trials with 2074 patients. The pooled results showed significant improvement for overall survival (HR = 0.87 (95% CI 0.79–0.95), p = 0.004) when necitumumab was added to chemotherapy in patients with advanced NSCLC. No statistically significant improvement was noted for progression-free survival and objective response rate (HR = 0.83 (95% CI 0.69–1.01), p = 0.06 and OR = 1.46 (95% CI 0.90–2.38), p = 0.13, respectively). Subgroup analysis showed that in patients with non-squamous NSCLC, there was no benefit in overall survival and objective response rate. Patients with advanced NSCLC who received necitumumab were at the highest odds of developing a skin rash (OR = 14.50 (95% CI 3.16–66.43), p = 0.0006) and hypomagnesaemia (OR = 2.77 (95% CI 2.23–3.45), p < 0.00001), while the OR for any grade ≥3 adverse event was 1.55 (95% CI 1.28–1.87, p < 0.00001). Conclusions: The addition of necitumumab to standard chemotherapy in a first-line setting in patients with stage IV NSCLC results in a statistically significant improvement in overall survival, while the results were not significant for progression-free survival and objective response rate.