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. 2023 May 25;15(11):2912. doi: 10.3390/cancers15112912
Progression-free survival (PFS) The time from treatment initiation until disease progression or worsening. It may be used as a direct or surrogate measure of clinical benefit for drug approvals.
Pathological complete response (pCR) Defined as no residual disease after treatment determined by the pathologist.
Partial response (PR) The decrease in the size of a tumor, or the extent of cancer in the body, in response to treatment.
Overall survival (OS) The time from treatment to death, with no restriction on the cause of death. It is universally accepted as a direct measure of clinical benefit; however, in some disease areas, surrogate end-points are used to try to reduce the time taken to analyze new treatments.
Overall response rate (ORR) The proportion of patients who have a partial or complete response to therapy.
Neoadjuvant therapies Treatments administered before the main therapy, to help reduce the size of a tumor or kill cancer cells that have spread.
Metronomic chemotherapy A treatment in which low doses of anti-cancer drugs are given on a continuous or frequent, regular schedule (such as daily or weekly), usually over a long time. Metronomic chemotherapy causes less severe side effects than standard chemotherapy.
Event-free survival (EFS) The time after treatment for cancer when a patient remains free of certain complications or events that the treatment was intended to prevent. It is a term that denotes the possibility of having a particular group of defined events (could be a fracture, some lab test abnormality, a particular kind of progression such as brain metastasis, etc.) after a treatment that is designed to delay or prevent that group of events.
Combined positive score (CPS) Corresponds to the total number of tumor cells and immune cells (including lymphocytes and macrophages) stained with PD-L1 divided by the number of all viable tumor cells, then multiplied by 100.
Complete response (CR) The disappearance of all signs of cancer in response to treatment.
Adjuvant therapies Treatments administered after the primary therapy to try to kill the remaining cancer cells.