Dr. Nelson on QOL Data From the BEACON CRC Trial in mCRC

Douglas A. Nelson, MD, associate professor in the Department of General Oncology, Division of Cancer Medicine, The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center, discusses the quality-of-life (QOL) data from the phase III BEACON CRC trial in metastatic colorectal cancer (mCRC).

The combination of encorafenib (Braftovi) and cetuximab (Erbitux) with or without binimetinib (Mektovi) showed an improvement in QOL versus the current standard of care in patients with BRAF V600E-mutant mCRC, according to updated findings from the phase III BEACON CRC trial. The findings, which were presented at the 2020 Gastrointestinal Cancers Symposium, showed that the doublet and the triplet led to a greater than 40% reduction in the risk of QOL deterioration.

The QOL assessments, which served as a secondary end point of the trial, were performed with the EORTC QOL Questionnaire, the Functional Assessment of Cancer Therapy Colon Cancer, the EuroQoL 5D 5L, and the Patient Global Impression of Change. The median time to deterioration in the doublet and triplet arms was at least double that of the control arm, regardless of the tool that was used. QOL assessments are important to evaluate in clinical trials because they can help patients better understand the impact of treatment on their lives more effectively than a chart of grade 3/4 adverse events, concludes Nelson.