Multicenter Phase I/II Study of Nivolumab Combined with Paclitaxel Plus Ramucirumab as Second-line Treatment in Patients with Advanced Gastric Cancer

Purpose: We conducted a phase I/II study to investigate the safety and efficacy of nivolumab with paclitaxel plus ramucirumab. Patients and Methods: Patients with advanced gastric cancer (AGC) refractory to first-line chemotherapy were included. Patients received nivolumab (3 mg/kg on days 1 and 15) combined with paditaxel (80 mg/m 2 on days 1, 8, and 15) and ramucirumab (8 mg/kg on days 1 and 15) every 4 weeks. After feasibility evaluation in six patients (phase I), 37 additional patients were enrolled in the phase II part with the primary endpoint of 6-month progression-free survival (PFS) rate with two-sided 80% confidence interval (CI). The combined positive score (CPS) was defined as the number of programmed death-ligand 1-positive cells divided by the total number of viable tumor cells multiplied by 100. Results: Forty-three patients were enrolled. Of these, 603% had CPS >= 1. Dose-limiting toxicities were observed in two patients, and the recommended dose was determined as level 1. Thirty-nine (90.7%) patients experienced treatment-related adverse events (AEs) grade >= 3 and 14 (32.6%) patients experienced immune- related AEs grade The overall response rate was 37.2% (95% CI, 23.0%-53.5%) and the 6-month PFS rate was 46.5% (80% CI, 36.4%-55.8%; P = 0.067). Median survival time was 13.1 months (95% CI, 8.0-16.6 months): 13.8 months (95% CI, 8.0-19.5 months) in patients with CPS >= 1 and 8.0 months (95% CI, 4.8-24.1 months) in patients with CPS < 1. Conclusions: Nivolumab with paclitaxel plus ramucirumab demonstrated promising antitumor activity with manageable toxicities as second-line treatment for AGC.

Automated summary

The study aimed to investigate the safety and efficacy of nivolumab with paclitaxel plus ramucirumab in advanced gastric cancer, showing promising antitumor activity with manageable toxicities, suggesting the need for further research to determine optimal treatment strategies.