Recently a patient came to me from a prominent Cancer Hospital in New Delhi. His father had EGFR + advanced Lung cancer and he had been told that Afatinib (recently introduced into clinical practice) was better than the drugs being used earlier namely Erlotinib and Gefitinib . He asked me for my take on this. And whether there was enough evidence to support the view that had been given.
I didn't know but I promised to read about it and get back to him. What is the role of afatinib in advanced non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC)? Afatinib, an irreversible tyrosine kinase inhibitor (TKI) of the entire human epithelial receptor (HER) family, of which EGFR (also known as HER-1) is one member, has already been shown in the LUX-Lung 3 trial to be associated with significantly longer progression-free survival (PFS), as compared with cisplatin/pemetrexed, in patients with advanced NSCLC…
