Source: www.medpagetoday.com Author: Michael Smith, North American Correspondent, MedPage Today A novel non-platinum-based regimen was efficacious in recurrent or metastatic squamous cell head and neck cancer, researchers said. The combination of pemetrexed (Alimta) and bevacizumab (Avastin) yielded a response rate of 30% in a small single-arm trial, according to Athanassios Argiris, MD, of the University of Pittsburgh, and colleagues. The combination also increased the length of time before patients progressed, and increased median overall survival, Argiris and colleagues reported in a poster discussion session at the annual meeting of the American Society of Clinical Oncology here. Patients with recurrent or metastatic disease typically have a poor prognosis, the researchers said, with median survival between six and nine months with standard chemotherapy. But, in other research, adding the monoclonal antibody cetuximab (Erbitux) to platinum-based chemotherapy increased survival, they said. Bevacizumab is a monoclonal antibody that targets the vascular epithelial growth factor (VEGF), which is expressed in squamous cell head and neck cancer; high levels of VEGF correlate with poor outcome, they noted. The researchers hypothesized that the antibody might enhance the activity of pemetrexed, which is a multi-targeted antifolate indicated for malignant pleural mesothelioma and non-small cell lung cancer. To test the idea, they analyzed results of treating 37 patients given 500 mg/m2 of pemetrexed and 15 mg/kg of bevacizumab intravenously every 21 days until disease progression. Patients were also given folic acid and vitamin B12. The primary endpoint of the study was time to progression, they said, but the researchers [...]