A trial looking at chemotherapy for advanced non small cell lung cancer (BTOG2)

Cancer type:

Lung cancer

Non small cell lung cancer

Status:

Results

Phase:

Phase 3

This trial found out more about chemotherapy to treat non small cell lung cancer. The trial was open to people with non small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) that had spread. This trial was supported by Cancer Research UK.

Chemotherapy is sometimes used to treat people who have non small cell lung cancer (NSCLC). If you have chemotherapy for NSCLC, you may have cisplatin or carboplatin.

More about this trial

Many doctors use a particular dose of cisplatin. Research suggested that higher doses of this drug may be better at shrinking and controlling the cancer. One of the aims of this trial was to find out the best dose to use.

This trial also compared cisplatin with carboplatin, to see which worked best. Everyone in the trial also had another chemotherapy drug called gemcitabine. Trials have shown that gemcitabine combined with standard drugs can improve lung cancer treatment. So if you took part in this trial you either had

Low dose cisplatin with gemcitabine
High dose cisplatin with gemcitabine
Carboplatin and gemcitabine

The researchers also wanted to find out how these different treatments affected quality of life Open a glossary item .

Summary of results

The trial team found that gemcitabine with carboplatin worked just as well as gemcitabine with the highest dose of cisplatin to treat advanced non small cell lung cancer (NSCLC).

This was a randomised trial . It recruited 1,363 people. They were put into 1 of 3 treatment groups and neither they nor their doctor could choose which group they were in.

454 people had low dose cisplatin and gemcitabine
456 people had high dose cisplatin and gemcitabine
453 people had carboplatin and gemcitabine

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After an average follow up of 60 months the trial team looked at how many people’s lung cancer had responded to treatment. They found that

20 out of every 100 people (20%) responded low dose cisplatin
29 out of every 100 people (29%) responded high dose cisplatin
27 out of every 100 people (27%) responded carboplatin

The team then looked at the average length of time people lived after treatment. They found it was

Just over 8 months for those who had low dose cisplatin
9½ months for those who had high dose cisplatin
10 months for those who had carboplatin

417-barchart.png

The team said that the differences between treatments seen in both these results are unlikely to have happened by chance and so they were statistically significant Open a glossary item

The trial team concluded that the combination of gemcitabine and carboplatin worked just as well as the combination of gemcitabine and high dose cisplatin for people with advanced non small cell lung cancer.

We have based this summary on information from the research team. The information they sent us has been reviewed by independent specialists (peer reviewed Open a glossary item ) but may not have been published in a medical journal. The figures we quote above were provided by the research team. We have not analysed the data ourselves.