Dr. Galle on Patient-Reported Outcomes From the Phase III IMbrave150 Trial

Peter R. Galle, MD, the director of the Medical Department at the University Medical Center Mainz and president-elect of the German Association for the Study of the Liver, discusses patient-reported outcomes results from the phase III IMbrave150 trial, which he presented at the 2020 Gastrointestinal Cancers Symposium.

In the trial, patients with unresectable hepatocellular carcinoma were randomized 2:1 to receive either atezolizumab (Tecentriq) plus bevacizumab (Avastin) or sorafenib (Nexavar) until loss of clinical benefit or unacceptable toxicity. Topline findings presented at the 2019 ESMO Asia Congress showed that the frontline combination resulted in a 42% in the risk of disease progression or death compared with sorafenib.

A prespecified secondary end point of the trial was time to deterioration of patient-reported quality of life as well as physical and role functioning. As such, patients completed questionnaires prior to treatment, every 3 weeks while on treatment, and every 3 months after treatment discontinuation or disease progression.

Investigators learned that at each cycle where patients were compared with baseline, a lower proportion of those receiving the atezolizumab/bevacizumab combination showed a deterioration compared with sorafenib, says Galle. The combination was better tolerated and the quality of life of patients who received it was also more favorable than those who received sorafenib, Galle added. The data were consistent throughout the different scales that were assessed.

Additionally, an exploratory analysis assessed toxicities in patients with HCC and showed that these symptoms were delayed in those who received atezolizumab plus bevacizumab compared with those who received sorafenib, concludes Galle.

<<< View more from 2020 Gastrointestinal Cancers Symposium