Trial of Spesolimab for Generalized Pustular Psoriasis.

BACKGROUND: Generalized pustular psoriasis (GPP) is a rare, life-threatening, inflammatory skin disease characterized by widespread eruption of sterile pustules. Interleukin-36 signaling is involved in the pathogenesis of this disorder. Spesolimab, a humanized anti-interleukin-36 receptor monoclonal antibody, is being studied for the treatment of GPP flares. METHODS: In a phase 2 trial, we randomly assigned patients with a GPP flare in a 2:1 ratio to receive a single 900-mg intravenous dose of spesolimab or placebo. Patients in both groups could receive an open-label dose of spesolimab on day 8, an open-label dose of spesolimab as a rescue medication after day 8, or both and were followed to week 12. The primary end point was a Generalized Pustular Psoriasis Physician Global Assessment (GPPGA) pustulation subscore of 0 (range, 0 [no visible pustules] to 4 [severe pustulation]) at the end of week 1. The key secondary end point was a GPPGA total score of 0 or 1 (clear or almost clear skin) at the end of week 1; scores range from 0 to 4, with higher scores indicating greater disease severity. RESULTS: A total of 53 patients were enrolled: 35 were assigned to receive spesolimab and 18 to receive placebo. At baseline, 46% of the patients in the spesolimab group and 39% of those in the placebo group had a GPPGA pustulation subscore of 3, and 37% and 33%, respectively, had a pustulation subscore of 4. At the end of week 1, a total of 19 of 35 patients (54%) in the spesolimab group had a pustulation subscore of 0, as compared with 1 of 18 patients (6%) in the placebo group (difference, 49 percentage points; 95% confidence interval [CI], 21 to 67; P<0.001). A total of 15 of 35 patients (43%) had a GPPGA total score of 0 or 1, as compared with 2 of 18 patients (11%) in the placebo group (difference, 32 percentage points; 95% CI, 2 to 53; P = 0.02). Drug reactions were reported in 2 patients who received spesolimab, in 1 of them concurrently with a drug-induced hepatic injury. Among patients assigned to the spesolimab group, infections occurred in 6 of 35 (17%) through the first week; among patients who received spesolimab at any time in the trial, infections had occurred in 24 of 51 (47%) at week 12. Antidrug antibodies were detected in 23 of 50 patients (46%) who received at least one dose of spesolimab. CONCLUSIONS: In a phase 2 randomized trial involving patients with GPP, the interleukin-36 receptor inhibitor spesolimab resulted in a higher incidence of lesion clearance at 1 week than placebo but was associated with infections and systemic drug reactions. Longer and larger trials are warranted to determine the effect and risks of spesolimab in patients with pustular psoriasis. (Funded by Boehringer Ingelheim; Effisayil 1 ClinicalTrials.gov number, NCT03782792.).

Afatinib in patients with advanced non-small cell lung cancer harboring HER2 mutations, previously treated with chemotherapy: A phase II trial.

BACKGROUND: Despite 1-4 % of NSCLC tumors harboring mutations in the HER2 gene, there are no approved HER2-pathway-targeted treatments available. We report an open-label, single-arm, multicenter phase II study investigating the efficacy and safety of afatinib in Asian patients with HER2-mutation positive (HER2m+) NSCLC. METHODS: Eligible patients for Part A had confirmed stage IIIb/IV HER2m + NSCLC, had failed one or two prior lines of chemotherapy, and were EGFR/HER2-inhibitor naïve. Patients received oral afatinib 40 mg/day in continuous 28-day cycles, until disease progression or intolerable adverse events (AEs). Patients qualified for Part B if they had > 12 weeks' clinical benefit and Eastern Cooperative Oncology Group performance status ≤ 2. In Part B, patients were to receive afatinib at the last received dose, plus paclitaxel 80 mg/m2 weekly, until disease progression or intolerable AEs. The primary endpoint in Part A was objective response (OR); secondary endpoints included disease control (DC), progression-free survival (PFS), and overall survival (OS). Further exploratory endpoints were OR, DC, and PFS in Part B. RESULTS: Eighteen patients received afatinib in Part A. No patient achieved an OR; 11 patients (61.1 %) achieved stable disease, and six patients (33.3 %) had progressive disease. DC rate was therefore 61.1 % (95 % confidence interval [CI]: 35.7, 82.7). A decrease in tumor size from baseline of > 0 to < 30 % was observed in eight patients. At the time of analysis, 16 patients (88.9 %) had progressed or died. Median PFS was 2.76 months (95 % CI: 1.87, 4.60) and median OS was 10.02 months (95 % CI: 8.47, 10.08). All patients experienced ≥ 1 AE, most commonly diarrhea (66.7 %) and rash (33.3 %). No patients met the inclusion criteria for Part B, and recruitment was slow; therefore, the study was terminated. CONCLUSIONS: This study found no clinical benefit of afatinib for EGFR TKI-naïve patients with HER2m + NSCLC.

One-stage individual participant data meta-analysis models: estimation of treatment-covariate interactions must avoid ecological bias by separating out within-trial and across-trial information.

Stratified medicine utilizes individual-level covariates that are associated with a differential treatment effect, also known as treatment-covariate interactions. When multiple trials are available, meta-analysis is used to help detect true treatment-covariate interactions by combining their data. Meta-regression of trial-level information is prone to low power and ecological bias, and therefore, individual participant data (IPD) meta-analyses are preferable to examine interactions utilizing individual-level information. However, one-stage IPD models are often wrongly specified, such that interactions are based on amalgamating within- and across-trial information. We compare, through simulations and an applied example, fixed-effect and random-effects models for a one-stage IPD meta-analysis of time-to-event data where the goal is to estimate a treatment-covariate interaction. We show that it is crucial to centre patient-level covariates by their mean value in each trial, in order to separate out within-trial and across-trial information. Otherwise, bias and coverage of interaction estimates may be adversely affected, leading to potentially erroneous conclusions driven by ecological bias. We revisit an IPD meta-analysis of five epilepsy trials and examine age as a treatment effect modifier. The interaction is -0.011 (95% CI: -0.019 to -0.003; p = 0.004), and thus highly significant, when amalgamating within-trial and across-trial information. However, when separating within-trial from across-trial information, the interaction is -0.007 (95% CI: -0.019 to 0.005; p = 0.22), and thus its magnitude and statistical significance are greatly reduced. We recommend that meta-analysts should only use within-trial information to examine individual predictors of treatment effect and that one-stage IPD models should separate within-trial from across-trial information to avoid ecological bias. © 2016 The Authors. Statistics in Medicine published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd.