A Study Comparing Chemotherapy Dosing Based on Either Standard Body Surface Area or Lean Body Mass in Patients With Advanced Lung Cancer

Official Title

A Phase II Double Blind Randomized Trial Comparing Standard Dosing Based on Body Surface Area Versus Dosing Based on Personalized Lean Body Mass in Patients With Stage IIIB or IV Non-Small Cell Lung Cancer Receiving First Line Cisplatin Based Chemotherapy

Summary:

Cancer patients are highly variable in their body composition, specifically in the proportion of fat and muscle. Some patients tend to gain fat and lose muscle (or lean body mass) at the same time. These patients can develop severe muscle wasting, termed sarcopenia. Patients with sarcopenia have more severe treatment related toxicity requiring delays, dose reductions and stopping of treatment, and have reduced survival. One potential explanation for this is that patients with sarcopenia have a reduced volume of lean body mass into which chemotherapy drugs are distributed, resulting in a higher concentration and greater toxicity. This study will randomize lung cancer patients to either the standard dosing strategy based on body surface area or experimental, personalized dosing based on lean body mass. Based on retrospective findings in this patient population, the investigators expect to find that severe toxicity will be reduced for sarcopenic patients on the personalized dosing arm based on lean body mass.

Trial Description

Primary Outcome:

• Dose limiting toxicity rates
• Number of Cycles completed

Secondary Outcome:

• Survival

Retrospective findings of NSCLC patients treated with a cisplatin based chemotherapy regimen show that although all were given cisplatin at the standard rate of 75 mg/m2 according to lean body mass, when this was expressed in relation to individual lean body mass, there was a high degree of variation. Incidence of dose limiting toxicity was 41% in patients whose dose was within + 25% of the median value. However, sarcopenic patients received on average a 35% higher dose and 80% of these patients experienced severe toxicity requiring dose reduction or termination of therapy, a clinically unacceptable level. The relatively muscular subset of patients with higher lean body mass had a reduced level of severe toxicity compared to those at the median dose. These findings have led to the design of a study with the goal of reducing high levels of toxicity in sarcopenic patients. If the expected level of dose limiting toxicity in sarcopenic patients is 80% based on the standard method of dosing, this could be expected to be reduced to the median value of 41% dose limiting toxicity by the administration of cisplatin scaled to individual lean body mass. Hypothesis: Levels of severe toxicity in sarcopenic patients may be reduced to clinically acceptable levels by cisplatin dosing scaled to 3.1 mg/kg lean body mass compared with standard dosing of 75 mg/m2 based on body surface area.

View this trial on ClinicalTrials.gov