Dr. Kopetz on the Rationale and Design of the BEACON CRC Study in mCRC

Scott Kopetz, MD, PhD, FACP, associate professor, Department of Gastrointestinal Medical Oncology, Division of Cancer Medicine, The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center, discusses the rationale and primary endpoints of the BEACON CRC study in BRAF V600E—mutant metastatic colorectal cancer (mCRC).

Patients with BRAF V600E—mutated CRC have a poor prognosis compared with other subtypes of mCRC. As a result, the standard-of-care options, until recently, were fairly limited. A key finding was acknowledging that while BRAF inhibition is able to transiently inhibit the key pathways, it really takes a combination of BRAF inhibition with EGFR inhibition to maximize the clinical benefit, says Kopetz. This was the rationale for the BEACON CRC study.

BEACON CRC was a phase III study that enrolled 665 patients and looked at either second- or third-line treatment of BRAF V600E-mutated mCRC. Patients were randomized to receive a control arm of either an irinotecan-containing regimen and cetuximab (Erbitux) versus the 2 intervention arms of encorafenib (Braftovi) and binimetinib (Mektovi) plus cetuximab or encorafenib and cetuximab.

The primary study met both of its endpoints of higher objective response rate (ORR) and overall survival (OS). The triplet arm experienced a higher ORR of 26% compared with 2% in the control arm. There was also an improvement in OS at 9 months in the triplet arm versus 5.4 months in the control arm.