P20. The role of statins in patients with advanced NSCLC harboring KRAS mutation treated with EGFR-TKIs

Abstract

Background

Epidermal growth factor receptor tyrosine kinase inhibitors (EGFR-TKIs) represent novel effective agents approved for the treatment of patients with advanced-stage non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC). KRAS mutations have been reported as a negative prognostic and predictive factor in patients with NSCLC treated with EGFR-TKIs. Several studies have recently shown that statins can block tumor cell growth, invasion and metastatic potential.

Methods

We analysed clinical data of 67 patients with locally-advanced (IIIB) or metastatic stage (IV) NSCLC harboring KRAS mutation treated with erlotinib or gefitinib. A total of 12 patients were treated with combination of EGFR-TKI and statin and 55 patients were treated with EGFR-TKI alone. Comparison of survival of patients [progression-free survival (PFS) and overall survival (OS)] according to the level of assessed tumor markers was performed using the log-rank test.

Results

The median of PFS and OS for patients treated with EGFR-TKI alone was 1.0 and 5.4 months compared to 2.0 and 14.0 months for patients treated with combination of EGFR-TKI and statin (P=0.037, P=0.181).

Conclusions

The study results proved significant improvement of PFS for patients treated with combination of statin and EGFR-TKI, the difference in OS was not significant.