A Single Institution’s Experience with Bevacizumab in Combination with Cytotoxic Chemotherapy in Progressive Malignant Glioma

BACKGROUND Bevacizumab and irinotecan may represent one of the most active treatments in progressive malignant glioma. Limited published experience with bevacizumab in patients with CNS tumors raises concerns regarding toxicity, particularly in regards to hemorrhage and thromboembolism. METHODS We retrospectively reviewed 36 patients with progressive malignant glioma after prior resection, chemotherapy and radiation who were treated with bevacizumab at our institution. Patients were evaluated for bevacizumab-related adverse events, time to treatment failure (TTF) and overall survival (OS). Two patients who progressed or died prior to completion of 4 cycles of therapy were analyzed for adverse events only. RESULTS Patients were treated with bevacizumab alone (1), bevacizumab plus irinotecan (31), or bevacizumab plus carboplatin (4). In 34 patients who received >4 cycles of bevacizumab, median TTF and OS were 16 and 32 weeks, respectively. Toxicities included 1 arterial thrombosis, 4 venous thromboses, and 3 clinically significant CNS hemorrhages. CONCLUSION Overall, our results confirm the efficacy and safety of bevacizumab in combination with chemotherapy in patients with progressive malignant glioma. Although the TTF and OS were less than previously reported with the combination of bevacizumab and irinotecan, this was an unselected patient population with 50% of patients having received >1 prior chemotherapy regimen.