Amgen has announced that its Phase III trial, ARROW, has achieved its primary endpoint of improving progression-free survival (PFS) in patients with relapsed or refractory myeloma. The study compared the effect of giving patients a higher dose of carfilzomib (Kyprolis®) once a week, compared to a smaller dose twice a week, together with dexamethasone. The results demonstrate that patients who received 70mg of carfilzomib weekly had a median PFS of 11.2 months, compared to 7.6 months for patients receiving the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approved dose of 27mg twice weekly.
As carfilzomib is administered intravenously, once weekly dosing would be of benefit to patients.
Carfilzomib in combination with dexamethasone has recently been approved as a treatment for relapsed and refractory myeloma patients in the UK.