Trastuzumab Biosimilar Has Comparative Safety and Efficacy After Long-Term Follow-Up
After three years of follow-up, researchers demonstrated that trastuzumab-pkrb offered similar efficacy and cardiac toxicity results in patients with HER2-positive early-stage breast cancer. They presented their findings at the European Society for Medical Oncology Congress in September 2019 (https://doi.org/10.1093/annonc/mdz240.016).
The researchers randomly assigned 549 women with newly diagnosed stage I–IIIa HER2-positive breast cancer to receive neoadjuvant trastuzumab or trastuzumab-pkrb for up to one year after treatment with docetaxel followed by chemotherapy with 5-fluorouracil, epirubicin, and cyclophosphamide. The safety and rate of pathologic complete response were similar.
At a median follow-up of 39 months, both arms had similar rates of disease-free and overall survival. Both had mean left-ventricular ejection fractions higher than 60% and no additional cases of heart failure during follow-up. The researchers concluded that their results support the similarity of the biosimilar and its reference product.
Learn more about biosimilars on the Oncology Nursing Podcast (http://www.ons.org/podcasts/episode-79-nurses-need-biosimilars-education-and-resources).