Efficacy and Safety of Gefitinib as Third-line Treatment in NSCLC Patients With Activating EGFR Mutations Treated With First-line Gefitinib Followed by Second-line Chemotherapy: A Single-Arm, Prospective, Multicenter Phase II Study (RE-CHALLENGE, CTONG1304).

Objective: There is no standard care for advanced non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) patients with epidermal growth factor receptor (EGFR) mutation in the third line. Our study aimed to assess the efficacy and safety of gefitinib as a third-line re-challenge treatment for advanced NSCLC patients with EGFR mutation.

Materials And Methods: It was a multicenter, open-label, single-arm, phase II study. Stage IIIB/IV NSCLC patients with EGFR exon 19del/L858R mutation, who had benefited from first-line gefitinib treatment followed by second-line chemotherapy, received gefitinib 250 mg/d. The primary objective was disease control rate (DCR) at week 8.

Results: Predefined DCR was achieved in 69.8% (95% confidence interval, 49.87-74.91) patients and objective response rate was reported in 4.7% (95% confidence interval, 0.78-13.06) patients. Median progression-free survival (PFS) was 4.4 months and overall survival (OS) was 10.3 months. Baseline T790M-negative patients achieved favorable DCR compared with T790M-positive patients (78.1% vs. 45.5%, P=0.0418), significantly longer median PFS (4.7 vs. 2.0 mo, P=0.0009) and median OS (15.2 vs. 7.7 mo, P=0.0132). We observed a negative correlation of PFS (r=-0.4396, P=0.0032), and OS (r=-0.3630, P=0.0167) with mutation abundance of exon 19del/L858R at baseline.

Conclusions: Re-challenge with gefitinib is effective and could be a choice for third-line patients after the first-line EGFR-TKI treatment and second-line chemotherapy, especially for the T790M-negative patients.