|
|||||
|
|
||||||
Originally published as JCO Early Release 10.1200/JCO.2006.10.2434 on June 18 2007 © 2007 American Society of Clinical Oncology. Phase IIB Multicenter Trial of Vorinostat in Patients With Persistent, Progressive, or Treatment Refractory Cutaneous T-Cell Lymphoma
From Duke University, Durham, NC; Stanford University, Stanford, CA; Northwestern University, Chicago, IL; University of Colorado Health Sciences Center at Fitzsimons, Aurora, CO; Tufts-New England Medical Center, Boston, MA; Emory University, Atlanta, GA; Merck Research Laboratories, Upper Gwynedd, PA; and the M.D. Anderson Cancer Center, Houston, TX Address reprint requests to Elise A. Olsen, MD, Divisions of Dermatology and Oncology, Duke University Medical Center, Durham, NC 27710; e-mail: olsen001{at}mc.duke.edu
Purpose To evaluate the activity and safety of the histone deacetylase inhibitor vorinostat (suberoylanilide hydroxamic acid) in persistent, progressive, or recurrent mycosis fungoides or Sézary syndrome (MF/SS) cutaneous t-cell lymphoma (CTCL) subtypes.
Patients and Methods Patients with stage IB-IVA MF/SS were treated with 400 mg of oral vorinostat daily until disease progression or intolerable toxicity in this open-label phase IIb trial (NCT00091559). Patients must have received at least two prior systemic therapies at least one of which included bexarotene unless intolerable. The primary end point was the objective response rate (ORR) measured by the modified severity weighted assessment tool and secondary end points were time to response (TTR), time to progression (TTP), duration of response (DOR), and pruritus relief (
Results Seventy-four patients were enrolled, including 61 with at least stage IIB disease. The ORR was 29.7% overall; 29.5% in stage IIB or higher patients. Median TTR in stage IIB or higher patients was 56 days. Median DOR was not reached but estimated to be Conclusion Oral vorinostat was effective in treatment refractory MF/SS with an acceptable safety profile.
Cutaneous T-cell lymphomas (CTCLs) are a group of non-Hodgkin's lymphomas that initially present in the skin and may ultimately involve lymph nodes, blood, and visceral organs.1,2 The majority of instances of CTCL are classified as mycosis fungoides (MF) or Sézary syndrome (SS), both characterized by proliferation of mature CD4+/CD45RO+ T cells and sharing the same classification and staging system.3,4 MF may present clinically as plaques, patches, tumors, or erythroderma. SS is defined as erythroderma with leukemic involvement with or without adenopathy or visceral involvement.2,5 Patient prognosis is based on disease stage.6 Curative modalities for MF/SS remain elusive and patients with advanced (stage IIB or higher) disease usually develop progressive disease (PD)6 after becoming intolerant of, or refractory to, multiple treatments. Novel effective treatments are needed, especially for advanced MF/SS patients, with the goals of durable remission, prevention of progression, and improvement in quality of life. Vorinostat (Zolinza; Merck & Co, Whitehouse Station, NJ; suberoylanilide hydroxamic acid) is a histone deacetylase (HDAC) inhibitor.7 HDAC inhibition results in histone acetylation and activation of gene expression.8 Defective histone-acetylation regulatory enzymes have been identified in malignant cells,9,10 and HDAC inhibition may have anticancer properties through restoration of normal acetylation. Vorinostat has induced histone acetylation, cell cycle arrest, apoptosis, and antitumor activity in preclinical cancer models.11-14 In phase I studies, vorinostat has been generally well-tolerated with dose-limiting toxicities of anorexia, dehydration, diarrhea, fatigue, nausea, vomiting, and thrombocytopenia.7,15-18 In these trials, activity was observed in patients with solid and hematologic malignancies, including CTCL. A phase II trial confirmed the activity and safety of oral vorinostat in patients with treatment-refractory CTCL and provided the basis for the selection of a 400-mg once daily dose for further study.19 The primary objective of this phase IIb trial (NCT00091559) was to determine the response rate of oral vorinostat for patients with stage IIB or higher SS/MF who had progressive, persistent, or recurrent disease. Assessment of the safety and tolerability of vorinostat in this population as well as time to response (TTR), duration of response (DOR), time to progression (TTP), and pruritus relief were secondary objectives.
This multicenter, open-label, single-arm, nonrandomized phase IIb trial was approved by the institutional review boards of each of the participating medical centers. All patients provided written informed consent before enrollment.
Patient Eligibility
Study Design Study visits were conducted biweekly for the first 2 months, and every 4 weeks thereafter for the remainder of the study. Patient medical histories, physical examinations, laboratory tests, and assessments of compliance with study medication, adverse experiences, and efficacy (modified severity weighted assessment tool [mSWAT], photographs, and pruritus intensity) were conducted during study visits. ECGs were conducted at baseline and every 4 weeks after starting therapy. Computed tomography with or without positron emission tomography scans were performed within 6 weeks of baseline to help establish peripheral lymph node size and assign TNM classification and repeated for tracking purposes in patients with a documented cutaneous response.
Patients with PD, unacceptable toxicity, or uncontrolled intercurrent illness were discontinued from the trial. Other criteria for discontinuation included: patient withdrawal of consent, noncompliance with study medication or visits, lack of efficacy, or any change that would render the patient ineligible for further treatment. Patients who completed
Efficacy and Safety Measurements
A complete response (CR) required 100% clearing of skin disease and a partial response (PR) required The severity (National Cancer Institute Common Terminology Criteria, version 3.0), duration, and relationship to vorinostat were determined for each adverse experience. Safety data were collected from the first treatment day until 30 days after the last vorinostat dose.
Statistical Analysis
Patient Population Seventy-four patients with MF/SS, including 61 (82%) with stage IIB or higher disease, were enrolled in this trial. Table 1 summarizes the baseline patient and disease characteristics. Forty-point five percent were designated by the investigator as SS (29.7% had confirmed SS by the International Society for Cutaneous Lymphomas criteria).5 The average treatment duration was 5.3 months and treatment compliance while patients were on active treatment was more than 94%. Sixty-one patients discontinued: 27 specifically due to progressive disease, nine due to a clinical adverse experience, and 25 for other reasons, such as patient withdrawal of consent or lack of efficacy. One patient completed 12 study months and 12 patients remained on vorinostat at the time of data cutoff.
Efficacy The objective response rate was 29.7% overall, and 29.5% in MF/SS patients with stage IIB or higher disease (Table 2). All initial responses were confirmed PRs; one patient achieved a CR after 281 days on vorinostat treatment. One third of patients (10 of 30) with SS responded (36.4% of those with confirmed SS by the International Society for Cutaneous Lymphomas criteria); four of these 10 responders had a concomitant blood tumor burden reduction 25%. Overall, 14 of 27 assessable SS patients had a blood tumor burden reduction 25%. Representative photographs of MF lesions are shown (Fig 1 and Appendix Fig A1, online only). Of the 24 assessable patients with clinically abnormal lymph nodes, 10 (41.7%) had a 50% reduction in lymph node size, including four of 10 with an objective cutaneous response.
Among patients with stage IIB or higher MF/SS, the median TTR was 56 days (range, 28 to 171 days) and the median DOR was not reached but was 185 days (range, 34+ to 441+ days). The median TTP was 148 days for all patients, and was not reached but was 299 days (range, 85 to 470+ days) for responding patients with stage IIB or higher CTCL. Response to vorinostat was not impacted by response to the last systemic treatment (Appendix Table A1).
Twenty-nine additional patients (48%) with stage IIB or higher disease attained clinical benefit as signified by mSWAT score improvement (Fig 2) but did not meet the objective response criteria: 10 of these patients experienced stable disease for
Safety and Toxicity The most common drug-related adverse experiences were gastrointestinal, constitutional, and hematologic abnormalities, or taste disorders presented in Table 4. Most adverse effects were mild to moderate in severity and did not require dose reduction or interruption of therapy. One of three patients on warfarin at baseline required dose reduction in warfarin while on vorinostat to maintain target international normalized ratio. ECG changes were noted in 15 patients, 10 who had a history of cardiovascular disease or a baseline abnormal ECG (Appendix Table A2, online only). There were no drug-related grade 3 or higher ECG adverse experiences. One patient had grade 2 QTc prolongation (> 470 to 500 milliseconds or increase of > 60 milliseconds above baseline) and two had grade 1 QTc prolongation (> 450 to 470 milliseconds) without other cardiac symptoms. None of the ECG adverse experiences resulted in vorinostat dose modification or discontinuation. Overall, nine patients had one dose modification and two patients required two dose modifications due to adverse experiences; nine patients discontinued due to adverse experiences, including seven that were drug-related.
Twenty-one (28%) of 74 patients had drug-related grade 3/4 adverse experiences. The most common were fatigue (5%), pulmonary embolism (5%), thrombocytopenia (5%), and nausea (4%). The median time to onset of drug-related grade 3 or higher events was 43 days (1 to 263 days), and the median duration of these events was 12 days (range, 1 to 257+ days). Eight (11%) of 74 patients had drug-related serious adverse experiences, which included: thromboembolic events (pulmonary embolism [three], pulmonary embolism/deep vein thrombosis [one]), anemia, blood creatinine increase, death, dehydration, gastrointestinal hemorrhage, ischemic stroke, streptococcal bacteremia, syncope, and thrombocytopenia (Table 4). The median time to onset of these events was 42 days (range, 2 to 227 days). Of these patients, four recovered from the serious adverse experiences and four discontinued the study because of these events. There were three deaths on study: one secondary to disease progression (day 52), one secondary to ischemic stroke (day 227), and one of unexplained cause (day 2). This latter patient had hypertension and valvular heart disease and died within 24 hours of changing blood pressure medication and without confirmation of having taken the first dose of vorinostat.
The primary objective of this multicenter, phase IIb trial was to determine the response rate of oral vorinostat in the treatment of patients with stage IIB or higher MF/SS who had progressive, persistent, or recurrent disease. Approximately 30% of patients overall, and of those with stage IIB or higher disease, achieved an objective response. These results are encouraging and comparable with the findings of the phase IIa trial of oral vorinostat (31% at 400 mg/d).19 In the current trial, 33% of SS patients and 23% of those with tumor disease had objective responses, signifying activity in more aggressive CTCL forms. There was no obvious impact observed of the response to last treatment, either bexarotene or other therapies, on subsequent vorinostat activity. These results suggest that vorinostat is noncrossresistant to currently available treatments and may be of benefit to patients regardless of prior treatment failure.
The secondary study objectives were to assess TTR, DOR, TTP, and pruritus relief, as well as the safety and tolerability, of oral vorinostat in this patient population. The median TTR was relatively quick (< 2 months). The median DOR was not reached, but was estimated to be
Posthoc analyses were performed using more conservative definitions of DOR and TTP that were not prespecified in the protocol. DOR was redefined as the time from first CR/PR until the mSWAT score was increased more than 50% from nadir (v > 50% of the difference between baseline and nadir scores) and PD was redefined as
As in the phase IIa vorinostat CTCL trial,19 a number of patients who did not achieve an objective response still obtained clinical benefit from vorinostat therapy, including 11 of 74 with prolonged stable disease and six with
The 400-mg dose of vorinostat was generally well-tolerated. As of March 1, 2007, 15 patients have received treatment for
Vorinostat is a novel anticancer agent that provided objective responses in 30% and pruritus relief in 32% of patients with treatment-refractory MF including those with tumor disease and SS. Clinically valuable long lasting responses were observed. Distinct from other agents used to treat CTCL, median TTR was relatively short. The median DOR was
Although all authors completed the disclosure declaration, the following authors or their immediate family members indicated a financial interest. No conflict exists for drugs or devices used in a study if they are not being evaluated as part of the investigation. For a detailed description of the disclosure categories, or for more information about ASCO's conflict of interest policy, please refer to the Author Disclosure Declaration and the Disclosures of Potential Conflicts of Interest section in Information for Contributors. Employment: Stanley R. Frankel, Merck Research Laboratories; Cong Chen, Merck Research Laboratories; Justin L. Ricker, Merck Research Laboratories; Jean Marie Arduino, Merck Research Laboratories Leadership: N/A Consultant: Elise A. Olsen, Merck & Co; Youn H. Kim, Merck & Co; Theresa R. Pacheco, Merck & Co; Madeleine Duvic, Merck & Co Stock: Stanley R. Frankel, Merck & Co; Cong Chen, Merck & Co; Justin L. Ricker, Merck & Co; Jean Marie Arduino, Merck & Co Honoraria: Madeleine Duvic, Merck & Co Research Funds: Elise A. Olsen, Merck & Co; Youn H. Kim, Merck & Co; Sareeta Parker, Merck & Co; Madeleine Duvic, Merck & Co Testimony: Timothy M. Kuzel, Merck & Co Other: Timothy M. Kuzel, Merck & Co
Conception and design: Elise A. Olsen, Timothy M. Kuzel, Stanley R. Frankel, Cong Chen, Jean Marie Arduino, Madeleine Duvic Financial support: Stanley R. Frankel Administrative support: Stanley R. Frankel Provision of study materials or patients: Elise A. Olsen, Youn H. Kim, Timothy M. Kuzel, Theresa R. Pacheco, Sareeta Parker, Stanley R. Frankel, Madeleine Duvic Collection and assembly of data: Elise A. Olsen, Youn H. Kim, Theresa R. Pacheco, Francine M. Foss, Sareeta Parker, Stanley R. Frankel, Madeleine Duvic Data analysis and interpretation: Elise A. Olsen, Timothy M. Kuzel, Sareeta Parker, Stanley R. Frankel, Cong Chen, Justin L. Ricker, Jean Marie Arduino, Madeleine Duvic Manuscript writing: Elise A. Olsen, Timothy M. Kuzel, Stanley R. Frankel, Justin L. Ricker Final approval of manuscript: Elise A. Olsen, Youn H. Kim, Timothy M. Kuzel, Theresa R. Pacheco, Francine M. Foss, Sareeta Parker, Stanley R. Frankel, Cong Chen, Justin L. Ricker, Jean Marie Arduino, Madeleine Duvic
Study Investigators: Debra Breneman, University of Cincinnati Medical Center, Cincinnati, OH; Kevin Cooper, University Hospital of Cleveland, Cleveland, OH; Madeleine Duvic, M.D. Anderson Cancer Center, Houston, TX; Francine M. Foss, Tufts-New England Medical Center, Boston, MA; Larisa J. Geskin, University of Pittsburgh, Pittsburgh, PA; Peter Heald, Yale University School of Medicine, New Haven, CT; Michael P. Heffernan, Washington University School of Medicine, St Louis, MO; Steven M. Horwitz, Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center, New York, NY; Ellen J. Kim, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, PA; Youn H. Kim, Stanford University, Stanford, CA; Alexa Kimball, Massachusetts General Hospital, Boston, MA; Neil Korman, University Hospital of Cleveland, Cleveland, OH; Timothy M. Kuzel, Northwestern University, Chicago, IL; Wilson Miller, Jewish General Hospital, Montreal, Canada; Elise A. Olsen, Duke University Medical Center, Durham, NC; Theresa R. Pacheco, University of Colorado Health Sciences Center at Fitzsimons, Aurora, CO; Sareeta R.S. Parker, Emory University, Atlanta, GA; Lauren C. Pinter-Brown, University of California, Los Angeles Medical Center, Los Angeles, CA; Eric C. Vonderheid, Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, MD.
We thank all of the patients and investigators for their participation.
published online ahead of print at www.jco.org on July 18, 2007. Supported by research funding from Merck Research Laboratories. Presented in part at the 42nd Annual Meeting of the American Society of Clinical Oncology in Atlanta, GA, June 3-6, 2006; and at the 48th Annual Meeting of the American Society of Hematology in Orlando, FL, December 9-12, 2006. Authors' disclosures of potential conflicts of interest and author contributions are found at the end of this article.
1. de Coninck EC, Kim YH, Varghese A, et al: Clinical characteristics and outcome of patients with extracutaneous mycosis fungoides. J Clin Oncol 19:779-784, 2001 2. Willemze R, Jaffe ES, Burg G, et al: WHO-EORTC classification for cutaneous lymphomas. Blood 105:3768-3785, 2005 3. Bunn PA Jr, Lamberg SI: Report of the Committee on Staging and Classification of Cutaneous T-Cell Lymphomas. Cancer Treat Rep 63:725-728, 1979[Medline] 4. Kim YH, Willemze R, Pimpinelli N, et al: TNM classification system for primary cutaneous lymphomas other than mycosis fungoides and Sezary syndrome: A proposal of the International Society for Cutaneous Lymphomas (ISCL) and the cutaneous lymphoma task force of the European Organization of Research and Treatment of Cancer (EORTC). Blood [epub ahead of print on March 15, 2007] 5. Vonderheid EC, Bernengo MG, Burg G, et al: Update on erythrodermic cutaneous T-cell lymphoma: Report of the International Society for Cutaneous Lymphomas. J Am Acad Dermatol 46:95-106, 2002[CrossRef][Medline] 6. Kim YH, Liu HL, Mraz-Gernhard S, et al: Long-term outcome of 525 patients with mycosis fungoides and Sezary syndrome: Clinical prognostic factors and risk for disease progression. Arch Dermatol 139:857-866, 2003 7. Kelly WK, O'Connor OA, Krug LM, et al: Phase I study of an oral histone deacetylase inhibitor, suberoylanilide hydroxamic acid, in patients with advanced cancer. J Clin Oncol 23:3923-3931, 2005 8. O'Connor OA: Developing new drugs for the treatment of lymphoma. Eur J Haematol 75:150-158, 2005 (suppl 66)[CrossRef][Medline] 9. Marks P, Rifkind RA, Richon VM, et al: Histone deacetylases and cancer: Causes and therapies. Nat Rev Cancer 1:194-202, 2001[CrossRef][Medline] 10. Timmermann S, Lehrmann H, Polesskaya A, et al: Histone acetylation and disease. Cell Mol Life Sci 58:728-736, 2001[CrossRef][Medline] 11. Butler LM, Agus DB, Scher HI, et al: Suberoylanilide hydroxamic acid, an inhibitor of histone deacetylase, suppresses the growth of prostate cancer cells in vitro and in vivo. Cancer Res 60:5165-5170, 2000 12. Cohen LA, Marks PA, Rifkind RA, et al: Suberoylanilide hydroxamic acid (SAHA), a histone deacetylase inhibitor, suppresses the growth of carcinogen-induced mammary tumors. Anticancer Res 22:1497-1504, 2002[Medline] 13. He LZ, Tolentino T, Grayson P, et al: Histone deacetylase inhibitors induce remission in transgenic models of therapy-resistant acute promyelocytic leukemia. J Clin Invest 108:1321-1330, 2001[CrossRef][Medline] 14. Zhang C, Richon V, Ni X, et al: Selective induction of apoptosis by histone deacetylase inhibitor SAHA in cutaneous T-cell lymphoma cells: Relevance to mechanism of therapeutic action. J Invest Dermatol 125:1045-1052, 2005[Medline] 15. Garcia-Manero G, Yang H, Sanchez-Gonzalez B, et al: Final results of a phase I study of the histone deacetylase inhibitor vorinostat (suberoylanilide hydroxamic acid, SAHA) in patients with leukemia and myelodysplastic syndrome. Blood 106:785a, 2005 16. Kelly WK, Richon VM, O'Connor O, et al: Phase I clinical trial of histone deacetylase inhibitor: Suberoylanilide hydroxamic acid administered intravenously. Clin Cancer Res 9:3578-3588, 2003 17. O'Connor OA, Heaney ML, Schwartz L, et al: Clinical experience with intravenous and oral formulations of the novel histone deacetylase inhibitor suberoylanilide hydroxamic acid in patients with advanced hematologic malignancies. J Clin Oncol 24:166-173, 2006 18. Rubin EH, Agrawal NG, Friedman EJ, et al: A study to determine the effects of food and multiple dosing on the pharmacokinetics of vorinostat administered orally to patients with advanced cancer. Clin Cancer Res 12:7039-7045, 2006 19. Duvic M, Talpur R, Ni X, et al: Phase II trial of oral vorinostat (Suberoylanilide Hydroxamic Acid, SAHA) for refractory cutaneous t-cell lymphoma (CTCL). Blood 109:31-39, 2007 20. Duvic M, Hymes K, Heald P, et al: Bexarotene is effective and safe for treatment of refractory advanced-stage cutaneous T-cell lymphoma: Multinational phase II-III trial results. J Clin Oncol 19:2456-2471, 2001 21. Ontak® (denileukin diftitox) product label details. http://www.accessdata.fda.gov/scripts/cder/onctools/labels.cfm?GN=denileukin%20difitox 22. Olsen E, Duvic M, Frankel A, et al: Pivotal phase III trial of two dose levels of denileukin diftitox for the treatment of cutaneous T-cell lymphoma. J Clin Oncol 19:376-388, 2001 23. Duvic M, Kuzel TM, Olsen EA, et al: Quality-of-life improvements in cutaneous T-cell lymphoma patients treated with denileukin diftitox (ONTAK). Clin Lymphoma 2:222-228, 2002[Medline] 24. King LE Jr, Dufresne RG Jr, Lovett GL, et al: Erythroderma: Review of 82 cases. South Med J 79:1210-1215, 1986[CrossRef][Medline] 25. Giles F, Fischer T, Cortes J, et al: A phase I study of intravenous LBH589, a novel cinnamic hydroxamic acid analogue histone deacetylase inhibitor, in patients with refractory hematologic malignancies. Clin Cancer Res 12:4628-4635, 2006 26. Piekarz RL, Frye AR, Wright JJ, et al: Cardiac studies in patients treated with depsipeptide, FK228, in a phase II trial for T-cell lymphoma. Clin Cancer Res 12:3762-3773, 2006 Submitted December 4, 2006; accepted April 20, 2007.
Related Correspondence
This article has been cited by other articles:
|
||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
|||||||||||
|
Copyright © 2007 by the American Society of Clinical Oncology, Online ISSN: 1527-7755. Print ISSN: 0732-183X
|