The course of Erbitux (cetuximab), the antibody to EGFR, in lung cancer over the last years has been controversial but overall underwhelming.  Added to carboplatin and Taxol (paclitaxel) or Taxotere (docetaxel) as first line therapy in a North American phase III randomized trial, it was associated with a marginal improvement in progression-free survival depending on who did the assessement, but no improvement in overall survival.

There has been quite a lot of discussion recently about the EGFR tyrosine kinase inhibitors (TKIs), erlotinib (Tarceva) and gefitinib (Iressa). Recently however the final results of the FLEX trial were published in The Lancet, bringing attention back to one of the antibodies against EGFR, cetuximab (Erbitux). Dr.

Within the lung cancer community, the biggest story from the ASCO meeting was the long-awaited plenary session presentation (abstract here) of the FLEX trial of chemo with or without the EGFR monoclonal antibody Erbitux (cetuximab) that we knew was statistically significantly positive for an overall survival benefit as far back as September of last year (see

There's a single lung cancer trial being presented 6/1/08 at ASCO's Plenary Session, at which the most important cancer studies of the year are presented. This is on the FLEX trial that I described in a prior post, and which was already reported to be positive, at a press release all the way back in September of last year.