NETs Data Updates at ASCO 2020

Pamela Kunz, MD: There is an abstract looking at real-world use of PRRT at a high-volume NETs [neuroendocrine tumors] center. This was conducted at the University of Iowa, and the first author is Justin Chau. This was an interesting abstract. We all know that clinical trials have very strict eligibility criteria and often do not mirror the patients we see in real-world practice.

Seeing some of these data using real-world patients to analyze and evaluate outcomes and adverse effects is really important to see whether these same treatments apply and to what patient population. This group studied 67 patients who received PRRT, of which 61 completed at least 2 doses. They found that the progression-free survival and overall survival were fairly equivalent to that published with the NETTER-1 trial in the New England Journal of Medicine.

One of the new findings is that they had a higher rate of discontinuation in patients not completing 4 total cycles, and anecdotally I found the same in my practice. When a new drug is FDA approved—we had so many patients waiting for this therapy, and these patients had often been very heavily pretreated and received many prior therapies, so they were probably quite a bit sicker than the study population from NETTER-1. Also, the authors did not, at least in their abstract, present data on the response rate, so I’m eager to see that when the full poster is available during ASCO [American Society of Clinical Oncology 2020 Annual Meeting].

Transcript Edited for Clarity