Therapeutics and Clinical Risk Management (May 2016)
Spotlight on afatinib and its potential in the treatment of squamous cell lung cancer: the evidence so far
Abstract
Yijun Xu,1,2 Vivianne W Ding,1 Hong Zhang,2 Xun Zhang,2 David Jablons,1 Biao He1 1Thoracic Oncology Program, Department of Surgery, Helen Diller Family Comprehensive Cancer Center, University of California San Francisco, San Francisco, CA, USA; 2Tianjin Chest Hospital, Tianjin, People’s Republic of China Abstract: Compared to adenocarcinoma, fewer effective treatment options are available for advanced or metastatic squamous cell carcinoma (SCC) of the lung. Afatinib is an orally administered, irreversible EGFR antagonist. As a second-generation tyrosine kinase inhibitor, it has been applied in the treatment of patients with EGFR-mutant non-small-cell lung cancer. Recently, several clinical trials have shown that afatinib leads to a significant improvement in progression-free survival and overall survival of patients with SCC. Moving forward, afatinib should be one of the options among tyrosine kinase inhibitors, monoclonal antibodies, and cytotoxicity chemotherapy drugs for SCC. Keywords: afatinib, squamous cell carcinoma, EGFR, tyrosine kinase inhibitor, non-small-cell lung cancer, ErbB
