Multistate Pharmacometric Model to Define the Impact of Second‐Line Immunotherapies on the Survival Outcome of the IMpower131 Study

Abstract

Overall survival is defined as the time since randomization into the clinical trial to event of death or censor (end of trial or follow‐up), and is considered to be the most reliable cancer end point. However, the introduction of second‐line treatment after disease progression could influence survival and be considered a confounding factor. The aim of the current study was to set up a multistate model framework, using data from the IMpower131 study, to investigate the influence of second‐line immunotherapies on overall survival analysis. The model adequately described the transitions between different states in patients with advanced squamous non‐small cell lung cancer treated with or without atezolizumab plus nab‐paclitaxel and carboplatin, and characterized the survival data. High PD‐L1 expression at baseline was associated with a decreased hazard of progression, while the presence of liver metastasis at baseline was indicative of a high risk of disease progression after initial response. The hazard of death after progression was lower for participants who had longer treatment response, i.e., longer time to progression. The simulations based on the final multistate model showed that the addition of atezolizumab to the nab‐paclitaxel and carboplatin regimen had significant improvement in the patients' survival (hazard ratio = 0.75, 95% prediction interval: 0.61–0.90 favoring the atezolizumab + nab‐paclitaxel and carboplatin arm). The developed modeling approach can be applied to other cancer types and therapies to provide a better understanding of efficacy of drug and characterizing different states, and investigate the benefit of primary therapy in survival while accounting for the switch to alternative treatment in the case of disease progression.