Approval of additional dosing regimen allows cancer patients to significantly reduce frequency of treatment visits
Flatiron Health real-world data (RWD) supported the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA)’s recent approval of a new dosing regimen for ERBITUX® (Eli Lilly and Company’s cetuximab) that can have a direct positive impact on the lives of patients with metastatic colorectal cancer (CRC) or squamous cell carcinoma of the head and neck (SCCHN).
The FDA approved a supplemental biologics license application (sBLA) for ERBITUX which provides a new, biweekly dosing regimen for the medicine’s indicated use in patients with K-Ras wild-type, EGFR-expressing metastatic CRC or SCCHN, when used as a single agent or in combination with chemotherapy.
This alternate dosing regimen to the previously approved weekly dosing regimen allows ERBITUX infusions to be scheduled alongside other biweekly treatments, significantly reducing the frequency of patient visits to an infusion center.
“Time is a precious commodity for patients with advanced cancer – every moment that is not spent traveling to and from or in the clinic are moments spent living life,” said Michael Vasconcelles, MD, Chief Medical Officer at Flatiron Health. “We are proud that Flatiron RWD brings the evidence we gather from patients’ real-life experiences to bear directly on improvements to their care.”
“This dosing change approval allows physicians to provide our patients with the same efficacious treatments in less frequent clinic visits,” says Lee Schwartzberg, MD, Chief Medical Officer at OneOncology, a longtime Flatiron community oncology partner. “It is encouraging to see the innovative use of real-world data and regulatory pathways that made this label change a reality.”
The approval decision marked a foundational proofpoint for the successful use of RWD to fill evidence gaps in the post-approval setting for regulatory decision-making. Efficacy results from overall survival analyses using Flatiron RWD in patients with metastatic CRC, who received either the weekly or biweekly ERBITUX dosing regimens, supported the results of the population pharmacokinetic modeling analyses in the sBLA. The application was also supported by pooled analyses of overall response rates, progression-free survival, and overall survival (OS) from published literature in patients with CRC and SCCHN.
“We are proud that our long-standing partnership with Flatiron Health is helping to advance the adoption of real-world evidence to support regulatory decision-making,” said Christian Nguyen, Pharm.D., vice president of global patient outcomes and real-world evidence, Lilly Oncology. “Being able to fill key evidence gaps through the rigorous analysis of high-quality real-world data will help us all to more quickly bring potential new treatment options for approved medicines to patients.”
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