Introduction: Targeting the EGFR pathway is a rational approach to treat patients with advanced NSCLC. Necitumumab, a second-generation recombinant fully human immunoglobulin G1 monoclonal antibody directed against EGFR, has recently been assessed in combination with first-line cisplatin-based chemotherapy.
Areas covered: This article reviews literature on necitumumab development, from preclinical data to results of Phase III clinical trials, either published or presented in international scientific conferences. Ongoing clinical trials were searched with the clinical-trials.gov website.
Expert opinion: During the last decade, advances in treatment of metastatic NSCLC have been exclusively achieved in patients with non-squamous histology. In this context, any treatment improvement, even modest, was eagerly awaited for patients with squamous NSCLC. In this patient's population, the SQUIRE Phase III study demonstrated a relatively small, but statistically significant survival benefit in patients treated with necitumumab in combination with standard chemotherapy (cisplatin and gemcitabin) compared with those treated with chemotherapy alone. However, the identification of predictive biomarker for treatment outcome is still needed to select the patients who will experience a large benefit from the targeted treatment.
Keywords: epidermal growth factor receptor; monoclonal antibody; non-small cell lung cancer; squamous; targeted therapy.