Multicentric survey on dose reduction/interruption of cancer drug therapy in 12.472 patients: indicators of suspected adverse reactions

Scrotal and Penile Erythrodysesthesia Associated with Neoadjuvant Capecitabine Chemoradiation

Capecitabine, a prodrug of fluorouracil, is a component of many chemotherapy regimens used to treat a wide variety of malignancies. One of the most common adverse reactions experienced by those who have been exposed to capecitabine is palmar-plantar erythrodysesthesia (PPE). PPE is a cutaneous manifestation of chemotherapy-related drug toxicity that has signs and symptoms of erythema, edema, pain, ulceration, or desquamation of the palms of the hands and soles of the feet. The signs and symptoms occur with varying severity. There are few reports of the genitalia being similarly affected. The following case describes a patient with locally advanced rectal cancer who experienced erythrodysesthesia secondary to a capecitabine-containing neoadjuvant chemoradiation regimen that primarily and most significantly involved the genitalia. 

The validation of a newly developed Arabic scale to assess patient-reported side-effects of antineoplastic agents

Background

Multiple scales in different languages were developed to measure patient-reported side effects of antineoplastics. However, these scales vary in their coverage of antineoplastics’ side effects, and none of them address both the severity and impact of antineoplastics’ side effects on patient quality of life. Hence, there is a need to develop a comprehensive, concise, and general scale to assess patients’ perceptions of both severity and impact of the commonly reported side effects of antineoplastics on patients’ activities of daily living and make it available in Arabic.

Objectives

To develop and validate a new scale in Arabic to assess patient-reported antineoplastics’ side-effects among Arabic-speaking patients undergoing chemotherapy.

Methods

A new scale was developed in Arabic that addresses 40 different emotional, cognitive, and physical side-effects of antineoplastics. The Antineoplastic Side effects Scale (ASES) contained three subscales focused on the side effects frequency, severity, and interference with patients’ activities of daily living. Seventy-eight patients with different cancer types were recruited from the oncology clinics of a university-affiliated tertiary care hospital in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia. The reliability of the questionnaire was examined using Cronbach’s alpha method. The construct validity was examined using principal component analysis with varimax rotation. The association between the scores of ASES subscales and various patient medical and sociodemographic characteristics were also examined.

Results

The mean age of participants was 53.8 (12.5) years and most of them were female (65.3%) and married (84.6%). The ASES demonstrated good internal consistency (Cronbach’s alpha = 0.91). The severity of the perceived side effects and their impact on activities of daily living were positively associated with female gender.

Conclusion

The newly developed ASES demonstrated good validity and reliability. This tool will hopefully help healthcare providers and patients to identify commonly reported antineoplastic side effects.

Oral antineoplastic agents: assessment of safety and dose adjustments in clinical practice

Objectives: Although the safety profile of oral antineoplastic agents (OAAs) is better than that of classic chemotherapy, the rate of severe adverse events (AEs) is high. The objective was to assess the reasons for adjustments to treatment with OAAs during the first 100 days of treatment. Methods: The authors performed a prospective observational study of cancer outpatients who initiated OAAs between November 2015 and October 2017. Dose reductions and treatment interruptions were closely followed-up during the first 100 days after the beginning of treatment with an OAA. The authors described the different safety profile of different OAA classes. Results: The authors included 443 patients (31 different OAA assessed), of whom 53.0% required their OAA to be adjusted during the first 100 days of treatment. A total of 151 patients required dose reductions and/or interruptions of OAAs owing to AEs. The authors identified 203 AEs in these patients. Treatment with sorafenib, lower ECOG performance status, and first-line treatment were associated with a higher proportion of treatment adjustments due to AEs. Conclusion: These results in clinical practice could be a first approach to help healthcare professionals to design patient monitoring programs by identifying priority patients and drugs, and remarks the importance of pharmacovigilance in OAAs.

Chemical and genetic inhibition of STAT3 sensitizes hepatocellular carcinoma cells to sorafenib induced cell death

Hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) has become the second leading cause of cancer related death, with an increasing death rate in recent years. For advanced HCC, sorafenib is the first-line FDA approved drug, with no more than 3 months' overall survival advantage. Recently, a novel strategy has been proposed to improve sorafenib efficacy through enhancing the ability of sorafenib to induce cell death. STAT3 plays a key role in cancer development and recurrence by promoting cell proliferation, survival and immune evasion through its well-established function as a transcription factor in cancer. Notably, STAT3 transcription activity, indicated by its phosphorylation on Y705 is heterogeneous in different liver cancer cell lines. And sorafenib attenuates STAT3 phosphorylation on Y705. However, the role of STAT3 in sorafenib induced cell death is still largely unknown. Here, we show that liver cancer cells also exhibit heterogeneous sensitivities to sorafenib induced cell death, which co-relates with the STAT3-Y705 phosphorylation levels and JAK1/2 expression levels in Hep3B, Huh7 and HepG2 cells. Furthermore, overexpression or knockdown of STAT3 could switch HCC cells between resistant and sensitive to sorafenib induced cell death, which could be partially due to its regulation on Mcl-1, an anti-apoptotic protein. Finally, both inhibitors of STAT3 SH2 domain (S3i-201) or STAT3 upstream kinases JAKs (JAK inhibitor I) could synergistically enhance sorafenib induced cell death. Taken together, these data strongly suggest that STAT3 is not only a downstream effector of sorafenib, but also a key regulator of cellular sensitivity to sorafenib induced cell death, which provide support for the notion to develop STAT3-targeting drugs to improve clinical efficacy of sorafenib in liver cancer.