Clinical Outcome of Systemic Treatment for Advanced Soft Tissue Sarcoma: Real-Life Perspective in Japan

The median survival time of patients with advanced soft tissue sarcoma (STS) is typically <12 months. Since 2012, physicians were able to administer second- and/or third-line treatment easily in Japan, following the approval of new drugs, namely, pazopanib, eribulin, and trabectedin. We investigated the real-life experience of adults with advanced STS who received systemic therapy after the approval of the aforementioned new drugs.

We retrospectively evaluated 34 patients (median age: 66 years) with primary STS arising at the extremities/trunk or unresectable local and/or metastatic STS between 2012 and 2019. We evaluated the tumor response and patient survival after initial systemic treatment.

As first-line treatment, doxorubicin and ifosfamide and other drugs were administered to 7 and 27 patients, respectively. Of 31 patients with an evaluable tumor response, partial response was observed in 2 (6.5%) patients, and 16 (52%) patients showed stable disease at 8 weeks. The 1- and 2-year survival rates were 51.4% and 28.4%, respectively. The median overall survival (OS) time was 12.6 months. Tumor response to first-line therapy was related to patient prognosis.

New drugs may be beneficial for patients with advanced STS. When patients cannot receive anthracycline-based chemotherapy because of a high risk of side effects, we believe that the aforementioned drugs may be administered as the first-line treatment.