Effect of Eribulin With or Without Pembrolizumab on Progression-Free Survival for Patients With Hormone Receptor–Positive, ERBB2-Negative Metastatic Breast Cancer

Importance

Prior studies have shown that only a small proportion of patients with hormone receptor (HR)–positive metastatic breast cancer (MBC) experience benefit from programmed cell death 1 (PD-1)/programmed cell death ligand 1 (PD-L1) inhibitors given as monotherapy. There are data suggesting that activity may be greater with combination strategies.

Objective

To compare the efficacy of eribulin plus pembrolizumab vs eribulin alone in patients with HR-positive,ERBB2 (formerlyHER2)–negative MBC.

Design, Setting, and Participants

Multicenter phase 2 randomized clinical trial of patients with HR-positive,ERBB2-negative MBC who had received 2 or more lines of hormonal therapy and 0 to 2 lines of chemotherapy.

Interventions

Patients were randomized 1:1 to eribulin, 1.4 mg/m²intravenously, on days 1 and 8 plus pembrolizumab, 200 mg/m²intravenously, on day 1 of a 21-day cycle or eribulin alone. At time of progression, patients in the eribulin monotherapy arm could cross over and receive pembrolizumab monotherapy.

Main Outcomes and Measures

The primary end point was progression-free survival (PFS). Secondary end points were objective response rate (ORR) and overall survival (OS). Exploratory analyses assessed the association between PFS and PD-L1 status, tumor-infiltrating lymphocytes (TILs), tumor mutational burden (TMB), and genomic alterations.

Results

Eighty-eight patients started protocol therapy; the median (range) age was 57 (30-76) years, median (range) number of prior lines of chemotherapy was 1 (0-2), and median (range) number of prior lines of hormonal therapy was 2 (0-5). Median follow-up was 10.5 (95% CI, 0.4-22.8) months. Median PFS and ORR were not different between the 2 groups (PFS, 4.1 vs 4.2 months; hazard ratio, 0.80; 95% CI, 0.50-1.26;P = .33; ORR, 27% vs 34%, respectively;P = .49). Fourteen patients started crossover treatment with pembrolizumab; 1 patient experienced stable disease. All-cause adverse events occurred in all patients (grade ≥3, 65%) including 2 treatment-related deaths in the combination group, both from immune-related colitis in the setting of sepsis, attributed to both drugs. The PD-L1 22C3 assay was performed on archival tumor samples in 65 patients: 24 (37%) had PD-L1–positive tumors. Analysis indicated that PD-L1 status, TILs, TMB, and genomic alterations were not associated with PFS.

Conclusions and Relevance

In this randomized clinical trial of patients with HR-positive,ERBB2-negative MBC, the addition of pembrolizumab to eribulin did not improve PFS, ORR, or OS compared with eribulin alone in either the intention-to-treat or PD-L1–positive populations. Further efforts to explore the benefits of adding checkpoint inhibition to chemotherapy among less heavily pretreated patients are needed.

Trial Registration

ClinicalTrials.gov Identifier:NCT03051659