The Food and Drug Administration has approved cabozantinib tablets (Cabometyx) for patients with hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) who have been previously treated with sorafenib.
Approval was based on an improvement in overall survival over placebo seen in the phase 3 CELESTIAL trial for patients with advanced HCC who received prior sorafenib.
Median overall survival was 10.2 months with cabozantinib versus 8.0 months with placebo (hazard ratio, 0.76; 95% confidence interval, 0.63-0.92; P = .0049). Median progression-free survival was 5.2 months with cabozantinib and 1.9 months with placebo (HR, 0.44; 95% CI, 0.36-0.52; P less than .0001). Objective response rates were 4% with cabozantinib and 0.4% with placebo (P = .0086), Exelixis, makers of the drug, said in a press release.
The most common grade 3 or 4 adverse events in the patients who received cabozantinib, compared with those who received placebo, were palmar-plantar erythrodysesthesia (17% vs. 0%), hypertension (16% vs. 2%), increased aspartate aminotransferase (12% vs. 7%), fatigue (10% vs. 4%), and diarrhea (10% vs. 2%). Treatment-related grade 5 adverse events occurred in six patients in the cabozantinib group (hepatic failure, esophagobronchial fistula, portal vein thrombosis, upper gastrointestinal hemorrhage, pulmonary embolism, and hepatorenal syndrome) and in one patient in the placebo group (hepatic failure).
Cabozantinib is also approved to treat renal cell carcinoma and medullary thyroid cancer.
Checkpoint inhibitor pembrolizumab was granted accelerated approval for the same HCC indication – to treat patients who have been previously treated with sorafenib – in late 2018.
Exelixis and its partner Ipsen have launched a phase 3 trial of cabozantinib in combination with the checkpoint inhibitor atezolizumab versus sorafenib in previously untreated advanced HCC. The trial will also explore single-agent activity of cabozantinib in the first-line setting, the company said in the press release.