Bevacizumab Proves Effective in Combination With Chemotherapy in Platinum-Resistant Ovarian Cancer

An editorial published in the latest issue of the Journal of Clinical Oncology highlights the encouraging results reported by the AURELIA trial, a randomized trial comparing the effectiveness of chemotherapy (investigator’s choice of once-per-week paclitaxel, pegylated liposomal doxorubicin, or topotecan) combined with bevacizumab in recurrent platinum-resistant ovarian cancer. A companion article in the same issue reports patient-related outcomes (PROs) in AURELIA, evaluating abdominal/GI PROs in the patients.

Reflecting the results reported by previous trials that studied bevacizumab (GOG, ICON7 and OCEANS), AURELIA observed a statistically significant benefit in progression-free survival (PFS) by including bevacizumab in the chemotherapy regimen. A significant improvement (3.3 months) in median PFS was observed, with the patients in the bevacizumab plus chemotherapy arm presenting a median survival of 6.7 months (hazard ratio, 0.48; 95% confidence interval 0.38 to 0.60; P <0.001) compared to a median survival of 3.3 months observed in patients receiving chemotherapy alone. Further, similar to the OCEANS trial, overall response rate (OSS) significantly improved from 11.8% to 27.3% (P = 0.001) in the bevacizumab plus chemotherapy arm in the AURELIA trial, as assessed by the RECIST criteria.

Read the complete editorial here: http://bit.ly/1fevs2JSource: Journal of Clinical Oncology; Published online March 17, 2014