“No pain, No gain” still true with immunotherapy: When the finger shows the moon, look at the moon!

For decades, standard cytotoxics have been good examples highlighting efficacy-toxicity relationships. More recently, evidences were brought by Sehouli and coworkers (Sehouli et al., 2015) analyzing retrospectively 4 controlled phase-III trials in 5114 advanced ovarian cancer patients treated with platinum and taxanes. They found that patients with grade-2 alopecia over their three first cycles exhibited significantly longer overall survival compared to patients who underwent delayed alopecia. However, the authors failed to show a clear direct link between severity of alopecia and survival, leaving open the question of an early onset of alopecia being or not a surrogate marker of a higher sensitivity to this doublet chemotherapy.

Source: Critical Reviews in Oncology Hematology - April 17, 2018 Category: Cancer & Oncology Authors: G. Milano, F. Innocenti, B. Lacarelle, J. Ciccolini Source Type: research