Sorafenib Assessed for Efficacy in the Real-World DTC Setting

Marcia Brose, MD, PhD, director of the Center for Rare Cancers and Personalized Therapy, director of the Thyroid Cancer Therapeutics Program, associate professor of Otorhinolaryngology: Head and Neck Surgery at the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania, and associate professor of Medicine at Penn Medicine, discusses a global, non-interventional study that assessed the use of sorafenib (Nexavar) as treatment of patients with asymptomatic radioiodine (RAI)-refractory differentiated thyroid cancer (DTC).

Brose explains that this study gave an idea of what the real-world responses are. The median duration of exposure to sorafenib was 15.6 months; the most common dose and frequency was a full dose of 400 mg twice daily. In the overall population of all 647 patients, the median overall survival (OS) was about 13.9 years from the time of original diagnosis. There was a median time to symptomatic progression from the initial visit of about 55 months and a 36-month time to symptomatic progression rate of 64%. The OS for the initial visit was not reached because patients were still responding at the time of the final analysis.

When looking at this study, the most important part is the real-world median, according to Brose. The real-world median for progression-free survival (PFS) with sorafenib was 16.7 months, and the 36-month PFS rate was 25.4 months.