• Rui You, Yi-Jun Hua, You-Ping Liu, Qi Yang, Yi-Nuan Zhang, Ji-Bin Li, Chao-Feng Li, Xiong Zou, Tao Yu, Jing-Yu Cao, Meng-Xia Zhang, Rou Jiang, Rui Sun, Hao-Yuan Mo, Ling Guo, Ka-Jia Cao, Ai-Hua Lin, Ying Sun, Chao-Nan Qian, Jun Ma, and Ming-Yuan Chen.
• Department of Nasopharyngeal Carcinoma, Sun Yat-sen University Cancer Center, 651 Dongfeng East Road, Guangzhou 510060, P. R. China.
• Theranostics. 2017 Jan 1; 7 (8): 2314-2324.

AbstractWe examined the benefits of the combination of anti-EGFR targeted treatment, cetuximab (CTX) or nimotuzumab (NTZ) and concurrent platinum-based chemoradiotherapy (CCRT) compared with CCRT alone in patients with stage II - IVb nasopharyngeal carcinoma (NPC). A total of 1,628 eligible patients with stage II - IVb NPC, who received CCRT (three cycles of 100 mg/m2 cisplatin every 3 weeks with intensity-modulated radiotherapy) with or without CTX or NTZ between June 2009 and December 2013 were included in the analysis. Using propensity scores to adjust for potential prognostic factors, a well-balanced cohort of 878 patients was created by matching each patient who received CTX or NTZ plus CCRT with no more than four patients who received CCRT alone (1:4). Efficacy and safety were compared between CTX/NTZ plus CCRT and CCRT alone arms. Compared with CCRT alone, treatment with CTX/NTZ plus CCRT was associated with a significantly increased overall survival (3-year OS, 96.6% vs. 92.9%, P = 0.015), improved disease-free survival (3-year DFS, 93.5% vs 86.9%, P = 0.028), and improved distant metastasis-free survival (3-year DMFS, 94.6% vs 89.3%, P = 0.030). Increased rate of CTX related-skin reaction and mucositis was observed in the CTX plus CCRT arm. Multivariate analysis demonstrated the combination of CTX/NTZ was a significant protective factor for OS, DFS, and DMFS in patients treated with CCRT. Our analysis suggests that the addition of CTX/NTZ to CCRT is more effective for maximizing survival in patients with stage II-IVb NPC compared with CCRT alone.

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