The addition of anti-angiogenic agents to chemotherapy and effects on progression free survival in posterior lines for patients with advanced soft tissue sarcoma: A retrospective analysis.

Abstract

e23539 Background: Soft tissue sarcoma (STS) is one kind of rare and heterogenous tumor with poor prognosis, especially after recurrence or metastasis. Series of studies had validated the efficacy and safety of anti-angiogenic agents for advanced STS, but others found no superiority of anti-angiogenic agents combined with chemotherapy than chemotherapy alone. Thus, there is an urgent need to select the subgroup of STS patients benefiting from vascular-targeted treatments. Methods: This study retrospectively collected all the inpatients diagnosed with advanced STS and treated by chemotherapy with or without anti-angiogenic agents at Beijing Chaoyang District Sanhuan Cancer Hospital, from January 2010 to December 2022. If a patient received multiple lines of therapies, each line of treatment was analyzed separately. The regimens included chemotherapy and anti-angiogenic agents were experimental group, while those treated with chemotherapy alone were control group. The endpoints of this study were progression-free survival (PFS), overall survival (OS) and treatment-related adverse events (TRAEs). Kaplan–Meier method with log-rank tests and Cox regression model were conducted to analyze the survival outcomes. Results: A total of 70 patients were documented and followed up with valid survival outcomes. With median follow-up time of 29.4 months, the addition of anti-angiogenic agents could prolong PFS saliently for patients in second or posterior lines (3.1 months versus 1.9 months, p = 0.019). The COX analysis also confirmed the addition of anti-angiogenic agents as independent factors for PFS (p = 0.046 for multivariate analysis) but not for OS. The most common all grade TRAEs were neutropenia, digestive dysfunction, anemia and hypertension, among which only hypertension showed prominent disparity in two groups (28.6% vs 3.6%, p＜0.0001). Conclusions: Compared with chemotherapy alone, the addition of anti-angiogenic agents could prolong PFS for patients with advanced STS in later stage, but could not improve overall survival. More patients suffered from hypertension after treated with anti-angiogenic agents, but all the TRAEs were moderate and tolerable.