ArticleCancer management and research2014
Interpreting overall survival results when progression-free survival benefits exist in today's oncology landscape: a metastatic renal cell carcinoma case study.
Article in Cancer management and research, 2014. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 3 papers.
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The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
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Who cites it
3 citing papers in PubMed.
- Evaluation of efficacy and safety of targeted therapy and immune checkpoint inhibitors in metastatic colorectal cancer.World journal of gastrointestinal oncology · 2025Article
- Exercise during CHemotherapy for Ovarian cancer (ECHO) trial: design and implementation of a randomised controlled trial.BMJ open · 2023Article
- Early tumor shrinkage as an "on-treatment" clinical predictor of long-term outcome in solid organ cancers.Indian journal of medical and paediatric oncology : official journal of Indian Society of Medical & Paediatric OncologyArticle
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Authors and funding
6 authors.
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No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
backgroundThe debate surrounding the acceptance of progression-free survival (PFS) as an intermediate endpoint to overall survival (OS) has grown in recent years, due to the challenges in demonstrating an OS benefit within clinical trials today. PFS is generally a good predictor of OS for cases where survival post-progression (SPP) is short, and less so when SPP is long. SPP depends on multiple factors, including residual effect from experimental treatment and effect from crossover or other subsequent therapies, posing unique challenges into the translation of PFS benefit into OS.
methodsThe objective of this analysis was to conduct simulations investigating how increasing SPP impacts PFS translation to OS, utilizing data from the AXIS (axitinib versus sorafenib in advanced metastatic renal cell carcinoma) trial. The underlying assumption was a treatment benefit in PFS (the PFS distribution parameters were chosen to be equal to median PFS in the AXIS trial) but no treatment effect on SPP, implying that PFS improvement is directly reflected in OS improvement.
resultsThe probability of a statistically significant difference between arms for OS decreased from 54.7% to 6.1% when median SPP was increased from one to 20 months. The probability of the hazard ratio of OS being ≥0.9 was similarly increased from 24.3% to 72.6%, even though the hazard ratio for PFS was 0.69.
conclusionThe present study shows that when simulated SPP is added to trial PFS data, the existing PFS benefit is diluted. Knowing that the AXIS treatment arms are well balanced with respect to post-trial treatments, we conclude that the PFS to OS benefit translation is primarily obscured by random variability largely unrelated to the true outcomes. The implications for drug development are not insignificant, as there would be a need to include more patients in studies or utilize a longer follow-up time to overcome the SPP variability issue.
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