SAN ANTONIO – In the FERGI trial, the combination of pictilisib and fulvestrant nearly doubled progression-free survival in a subset of patients with ER+/PR+ breast cancer, increasing the duration of response by almost 3 months, Dr. Eric Winer said at the San Antonio Breast Cancer Symposium.
But in the entire study cohort, the combination conferred no advantage over fulvestrant alone, with less than a 2-month survival advantage going to the combination therapy arm, said Dr. Winer of the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, Boston.
The findings raise the question of whether pictilisib, a general inhibitor of the PI3 kinase pathway, confers any meaningful clinical results, especially in light of the excess of associated adverse events (31% with combined therapy vs. 20% with fulvestrant alone), according to Dr. Jennifer Litton of the University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center, Houston.
In this video interview, she shared her views on the study results, the drug’s mechanism, and its possible future – especially in light of the more effective and more selective PI3k inhibitors that are now in early clinical trials.