David S. Hong, MD, on Outcomes of Larotrectinib in Patients with TRK Fusion Cancer

In an interview with CancerNetwork^®, David S. Hong, MD, deputy chair of the Department of Investigational Cancer Therapeutics at The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center, spoke about the study of reported outcomes of larotrectinib (Vitrakvi) in patients with TRK fusion cancer by the number of lines of priory therapy or baseline status.

Data from this study was originally presented at the American Association for Cancer Research (AACR) Annual Virtual Meeting 2020, held from April 27-28, 2020. 

Overall, the researchers analyzed pooled data from 159 patients enrolled in 3 larotrectinib trials to assess outcomes stratified by prior lines of therapy and ECOG performance status. The trials included an adult phase I trial, a pediatric phase I/II trial, and an adult/adolescent phase II basket trial. 

“Larotrectinib, which got approval several years ago, was based upon really 3 trials, a pooling of 3 studies,” said Hong. “So we wanted to explore, really do more granular understanding of whether performance status, or maybe prior lines of therapy, affected the overall outcomes in these patients.” 

Ultimately, response rates were found to be highest in patients who were treatment naïve or who had an ECOG performance status of 0. However, larotrectinib was found to benefit patients across varying degrees of pretreatment or performance status.

“So probably the biggest implication is that, if you can find these patients, and often times these patients are advanced cancer patients who have had a number of other prior chemotherapies or targeted therapies, they will benefit from larotrectinib,” Hong explained. “It’s really, I think, incumbent upon oncologists and academic oncologists to try and identify where these patients are.” 

This segment comes from the CancerNetwork® portion of the MJH Life Sciences National Broadcast, airing daily on all MJH Life Sciences channels.