BACKGROUND.
The authors investigated a consolidation biochemotherapy program with subcutaneous recombinant interleukin-2 (rIL-2) and recombinant interferon-a (rIFNa) biologic response modifiers (BRM) in patients with advanced nonsmall cell lung carcinoma (NSCLC) with responsive or stable disease to induction chemotherapy.
METHODS.
Patients with proven, advanced, previously untreated NSCLC were entered into the study. Induction chemotherapy consisted of cisplatin, 120 mg/m2 intravenously (i.v.), on Day 1; vinblastine, 6 mg/m2 i.v., on Day 1; and mitomycin-C, 6 mg/m2 i.v., on Day 1 (PVM), every 3 weeks. Subsequently, patients with complete response (CR), partial response (PR), and stable disease (SD) received consolidation biochemotherapy with subcutaneous rIL-2,3 MU/m2 twice/day, and rIFNa, 3 MU once/day, 5 days a week, starting 2 weeks after the second PVM course. After 3 and 6 weeks of BRM treatment, patients had a 14-day rest period to intercalate consolidating PVM courses. RESULTS. Seventy-seven patients were enrolled in the trial. After 2 PVM induction courses, 16 patients progressed and went off the study, whereas 61 patients were eligible for consolidation biochemotherapy. Among the 61 patients, 9 were not treated with BFW for several reasons, whereas 52 patients began biochemotherapy and were evaluable for toxicity. Furthermore, a few days after starting BRM, 9 patients discontinued therapy due to side effects; the remaining 43 patients received adequate treatment and were fully evaluable. In the 52 evaluable patients, the following BRM related toxicities were observed World Health Organization (WHO) Grade 2-3 fever in 85% of patients, asthenia in 71%, anorexia in 63%, and flu-like syndrome in 18.5%. PVM-related vomiting was present in 19% of patients. WHO Grade 3-4 myelosuppression, from both BRM and PVM (overlapping toxicity), was anemia in 16% of patients, leukopenia in 12%, and thrombocytopenia in 19%. There were three toxic deaths: two due to BRM-induced hypotension and one from pneumonia. In the 43 fully evaluable patients (23 PR and 20 SD after induction chemotherapy), after a median of 6 weeks of biochemotherapy (range, 3-16 weeks), we observed 5 of 20 patients achieving PR from SD, and 6 of 23 with confirmed PR. In these 11 patients, the median duration of response was 21 weeks (range, 7-80 weeks). Overall response improvement was 11.6% in the 43 patients and 6.4% in the 77 total enrolled patients. Median survival was 41 weeks (range, 15-173 weeks) in the 43 patients and 38 weeks (range, 1.4-173 weeks) in the 77 patients. CONCLUSIONS. In this study, biochemotherapy, when administered by this dose and schedule, did not offer substantial benefit although it caused significant toxicity.