New First-line Treatment Drug for Advanced Non-small Cell Lung Cancer-Afatinib / 中国药师

ABSTRACT

Afatinib is an irreversible inhibitor for the ErbB family of tyrosine kinases with oral administration. In two randomized, open-label and multinational phase III trials, the progression-free survival was significantly prolonged by afatinib compared with peme-trexed plus cisplatin (LUX-Lung 3) or gemcitabine plus cisplatin (LUX-Lung 6) in the treatment-naive patients with advanced non-small cell lung cancer ( NSCLC) with activating EGFR mutations. The patient-reported symptoms such as cough and dyspnoea, and certain health-related quality of life after the treatment by afatinib were also better than those treated by control dugs. Afatinib was ap-proved by FDA in July 2013 as the first-line treatment drug for the patients with metastatic NSCLC with EGFR exon 19 deletions or exon 21 (L858R) mutations. The action mechanisms, pharmacokinetics, clinical trials and adverse events were reviewed in this paper.