A small percentage of pancreatic cancer cases - including the one that affected the late Apple founder Steve Jobs - are so-called neuroendocrine tumors. Cabometyx from Exelixis can significantly extend the time until the disease worsens in patients with advanced cases of these tumors, researchers reported at the European Society of Medical Oncology meeting in Barcelona.
Among 95 patients with advanced pancreatic neuroendocrine tumors in a randomized trial - all of whom had failed other treatments - the median progression-free survival with Cabometyx was 13.8 months, compared with 4.4 months with placebo.
Progression-free survival was also improved with Cabometyx in 203 patients with advanced neuroendocrine tumors at other sites in the body, although not to as great an extent. Median progression-free survival in those patients was 8.4 months in the Cabometyx group and 3.9 months with placebo.
"The results support the use of (Cabometyx) as a new treatment option for patients with advanced extrapancreatic neuroendocrine tumors or pancreatic neuroendocrine tumors whose disease has progressed after at least one other line of therapy ... or in whom unacceptable side effects have developed after such therapy," Dr. Jennifer Chan of the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute in Boston and colleagues wrote in the New England Journal of Medicine.