ESMO 2014: Boehringer Ingelheim's new data for afatinib and Array's binimetinib

German family-owned drug major Boehringer Ingelheim has presented new data at the annual congress of the European Society for Medical Oncology (ESMO) which came to a close in Madrid, Spain, yesterday.

Phase III data from Boehringer Ingelheim’s LUX-Lung 8 trial, the first study to directly compare the efficacy of two different targeted agents in patients with advanced squamous cell carcinoma (SCC) of the lung, demonstrated superior progression-free survival of afatinib compared to erlotinib. Afatinib, an irreversible ErbB family blocker, showed significant improvement across several measures of efficacy, in particular for the primary endpoint of PFS compared to erlotinib in patients after failure of first-line chemotherapy. LUX-Lung 8 demonstrated that afatinib significantly reduced the risk of disease progression by 18% when compared to erlotinib, and delayed tumour growth (PFS by independent review: 2.4 versus 1.9 months). In addition, afatinib showed an improvement in the secondary endpoint of disease control rate (DCR). The objective response rate was numerically higher with afatinib compared to erlotinib (5% vs 3%).

Results of overall survival, the key secondary endpoint, are not yet mature, and will therefore be assessed at a later stage in the trial and reported at a future medical congress.