Details of the first study by one of Europe’s largest cancer centres, the Medical University of Vienna (MUV), assessing the clinical impact and feasibility of the ESMO Magnitude of Clinical Benefit Scale (MCBS) in a real-life context are now available on ESMO Open(1).
By systematically evaluating well-established oncologic treatment strategies from first-line to salvage treatment throughout major tumour entities, the MUV team’s results show that the ESMO-MCBS works very reliably and reproducibly in the field of advanced or metastatic disease and encourages its use in daily routine.
Dr Barbara Kiesewetter at MUV says, “It is remarkable to see that certain new treatments such as checkpoint inhibitors improve outcome impressively in comparison with recent treatment standards, as assessed by the ESMO-MCBS: such important compounds should be recommended for fast-track implementation in practice.”
“We analysed treatments and scored trials on the ESMO-MCBS and the resulting data was in line with clinical experience. As a result, our Programme Directors feel confident to use the ESMO-MCBS, particularly for novel treatments such as immunotherapy, to get an idea on what can be expected to support clinicians’ decision-making in practice.”
The ESMO-MCBS has been designed to assess the therapeutic benefit of drugs registered for the treatment of cancer and was tested in a range of solid tumours during its initial development process(2). The ESMO-MCBS considers the predefined primary and secondary study endpoints: overall survival and progress-free survival in terms of absolute gain and lower end of the 95% confidence interval of the corresponding hazard ratio and quality of life or toxicity respectively. Data of the new treatment is then analysed with respect to the duration of response or survival in the control arm, which has to be entered in corresponding forms and results in a clinical benefit ranking.
“The ESMO-MCBS is very simple to use and we feel that it is going to prove to be a very important tool for daily clinical practice based on our study results. Clinicians can go back to the data when considering new treatments and use the ESMO-MCBS online forms to analyse what can be expected from a new approach.” concludes Dr Kiesewetter.
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