- Center on Health Equity and Access
- Clinical
- Health Care Cost
- Health Care Delivery
- Insurance
- Policy
- Technology
- Value-Based Care
Avelumab Gains Accelerated Approval for Urothelial Carcinoma
The approval comes within months of avelumab being approved for the treatment of Merkel cell carcinoma.
Patients with locally advanced or metastatic urothelial carcinoma who are refractory to platinum-based chemotherapy can now be treated with a new immunotherapy treatment. Avelumab received an approval for Merkel cell carcinoma in November of last year.
The approval for bladder cancer comes following an open-label, single-arm, multicenter trial that included 242 patients whose disease had progressed on or after platinum-based chemotherapy or within 12 months of a platinum-containing neoadjuvant or adjuvant chemotherapy. The overall response rate following a 10 mg/kg intravenous dose of avelumab was 13.3% (95% CI, 9.1-18.4) in 30 patients who had been followed for at least 13 weeks, and 16.1% (95% CI, 10.8-22.8) in 26 patients who had been followed for at least 6 months. The median response to duration ranged from 1.4 to 17.4 months in both groups, but had not yet been reached at the time of analysis.
The most common adverse reactions that occurred in at least 20% of patients were fatigue, infusion-related reaction, musculoskeletal pain, nausea, decreased appetite, and urinary tract infection.
The drug is being developed by EMD Serono.
Data Back Neoadjuvant Combo vs Chemo Alone for Early-Stage NSCLC
April 24th 2024For patients with early-stage non–small cell lung cancer (NSCLC), combining neoadjuvant immune checkpoint inhibitors and platinum-based chemotherapy improves 2-year outcomes over chemotherapy alone, suggest findings of an extensive literature review and meta-analysis.
Read More
Oncology Onward: A Conversation With Penn Medicine's Dr Justin Bekelman
December 19th 2023Justin Bekelman, MD, director of the Penn Center for Cancer Care Innovation, sat with our hosts Emeline Aviki, MD, MBA, and Stephen Schleicher, MD, MBA, for our final episode of 2023 to discuss the importance of collaboration between academic medicine and community oncology and testing innovative cancer care delivery in these settings.
Listen
Polatuzumab Vedotin and R-CHP Appropriate for Untreated DLBCL
April 24th 2024Population pharmacokinetic and exposure-response analyses revealed a favorable benefit-risk profilane for the treatment combination of polatuzumab vedotin and rituximab, cyclophosphamide, doxorubicin, and prednisone (R-CHP).
Read More
