Everolimus and sunitinib for advanced pancreatic neuroendocrine tumors: a matching-adjusted indirect comparison

BACKGROUND Everolimus and sunitinib have been approved for the treatment advanced pancreatic neuroendocrine tumors, but have not been compared to each other in a randomized trial and have not demonstrated prolonged overall survival compared to placebo. This study aimed to indirectly compare overall and progression-free among everolimus, sunitinib and placebo across separate randomized trials. METHODS A matching adjusted indirect comparison was conducted in which individual patient data from the pivotal trial of everolimus (n = 410) were adjusted to match the inclusion criteria and average baseline characteristics reported for the pivotal trial of sunitinib (n = 171). Prior to matching, trial populations differed in baseline performance status and prior treatments. After matching, these and all other available baseline characteristics were balanced between trials. RESULTS Compared to the placebo arm in the sunitinib trial, everolimus was associated with significantly prolonged overall survival (HR = 0.61, 95% CI = 0.38-0.98, p = 0.042).Compared to sunitinib, everolimus was associated with similar progression-free (hazard ratio for death (HR) = 0.84, 95% CI = 0.46-1.53, p = 0.578) and overall survival (HR = 0.81, 95% CI = 0.49-1.31, p = 0.383). CONCLUSION After adjusting for observed cross-trial differences, everolimus treatment was associated with longer overall survival than the placebo arm in the sunitinib trial for advanced pancreatic neuroendocrine tumors.