Metronomic oral vinorelbine for the treatment of advanced non-small cell lung cancer: a multicenter international retrospective analysis

Metronomic oral vinorelbine (MOV) could be a treatment option for unfit patients with advanced non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) based on its safety profile and high patient compliance. We retrospectively collected data on 270 patients [median age 76 (range 48–92) years, M/F 204/66, PS 0 (27)/1 (110)/≥ 2 (133), median of 3 serious comorbidities] with stage IIIB-IV NSCLC treated with MOV as first (T1) (67%), second (T2) (19%) or subsequent (T3) (14%) line. Schedules consisted of vinorelbine 50 mg (138), 40 mg (68) or 30 mg (64) three times a week continuously. Patients received an overall median of 6 (range 1–25) cycles with a total of 1253 cycles delivered. The overall response rate was 17.8% with 46 partial and 2 complete responses and 119 patients (44.1%) experienced stable disease > 12 weeks with an overall disease control rate of 61.9%. Median overall time to progression was 5 (range 1–21) months [T1 7 (1–21), T2 5.5 (1–19) and T3 4 (1–19) months] and median overall survival 9 (range 1–36) months [T1 10 (1–31), T2 8 (1–36) and T3 6.5 (2–29) months]. Treatment was extremely well tolerated with 2% (25/1253) G3/4 toxicity (mainly G3 fatigue and anemia) and no toxic deaths. We observed the longer OS 14 (range 7–36) months in a subset of squamous NSCLC patients receiving immunotherapy after metronomic oral vinorelbine. We confirmed MOV as an extremely safe treatment in a large real world population of advanced NSCLC with an interesting activity mainly consisting of long-term disease stabilization. We speculate the possibility of a synergistic effect with subsequent immunotherapy.