ESMO 2016 | FALCON trial of fulvestrant for advanced breast cancer: subgroup analysis and overall survival

Matthew Ellis, MB, BChir, PhD, FRCP of Baylor College of Medicine, Houston, TX discusses take-home messages from the Phase III FALCON randomized trial of fulvestrant versus anastrozole for hormone receptor-positive advanced breast cancer (NCT01602380). Prof. Ellis explains that one of the take-home messages comes from a subgroup analysis. Patients with hormone receptor-positive advanced breast cancer form a very heterogenous group; a typical patient on the FALCON trial had non-visceral disease. In this group, the advantage for fulvestrant seems more dramatic as Prof. Ellis explains. Further, the overall survival (OS) data for using fulvestrant upfront is not known yet; there is a hypothesis from an earlier, smaller, open-label study suggesting that fulvestrant could be associated with an OS advantage if used frontline but the study was not big enough to be definitive. According to Prof. Ellis, we will know about OS in around 18 months to two years when the study is fully matured.
Recorded at the 2016 annual meeting of the European Society of Medical Oncology (ESMO), held in Copenhagen, Denmark.