Cobimetinib – breast cancer
On November 10, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approved the use of cobimetinib (Cotellic™) in combination with vemurafenib (Zelboraf®) to treat patients with metastatic melanoma.Cobimetinib inhibits the activity of an enzyme known as MEK and vemurafenib inhibits the enzyme BRAF to disrupt cancer cell growth and survival.
In regard to creast cancer, a small clinical trial demonstrated encouraging clinical activity in triple-negative breast cancer (TNBC) treated with a MEK inhibitor and a taxane.
The combination of cobimetinib (Cotellic) and paclitaxel led to confirmed partial responses in 6 of 16 patients and 2 additional unconfirmed partial responses. Five of the 6 confirmed responses proved to be durable, persisting for about 20 weeks. Evaluation of the cobimetinib-paclitaxel combination’s safety, efficacy, and biomarkers will continue in an ongoing randomized trial (versus paclitaxel-placebo) in 90 patients with TNBC.
Brufsky A, Kim S-B, Velu T, et al. Combimetinib (c) combined with paclitaxel (p) as a first-line treatment in patients (pts) with advanced triple-negative breast cancer (COLET study): Updated clinical and biomarker results. Presented at: 2016 San Antonio Breast Cancer Symposium; December 6-10, 2016; San Antonio, TX. Abstract P4-22-22.
Cometinib, Prescribing Information, 2018
NCCN, Breast Cancer 2018