Time Until Partial Response in Metastatic Adrenocortical Carcinoma Long-Term Survivors.

A partial response (PR) has been proposed as a surrogate for overall survival in advanced adrenocortical carcinoma (ACC). The primary endpoint of the study was to characterize the time until a PR in patients with metastatic ACC treated with a standard therapy is achieved. Long-term survivors were selected to allow evaluation of delayed tumor response to mitotane. Records from patients with metastatic ACC that survived for > 24 months were retrieved. Tumor response was analyzed according to the Response Evaluation Criteria in Solid Tumors (RECIST) 1.1 criteria. Time until a tumor response, after treatment initiation or therapeutic plasma mitotane level, was analyzed. Sixty-eight patients were analyzed. The first-line systemic therapy was mitotane as a monotherapy (M) (n = 57) or cytotoxic polychemotherapy plus/minus mitotane (PC ± M) (n = 11). The second-line therapy was M (n = 2) or PC ± M (n = 41). Thirty-two PRs occurred in 30/68 patients (44.1%): this was obtained for 13 (40.6%) during M and during PC ± M for 19/32 responders (59.4%). PRs were observed within 6 months of starting M or PC ± M in 76.9 and 94.7% of responses, respectively, within 6 months of therapeutic plasma mitotane being first observed in 88.9% of responses with M and in 53.3% of responses with PC ± M. All PRs (but one) occurred within 1 year after initiating treatment. To conclude, Most patients with metastatic ACC and long survival times had PRs within the first 6 months of standard systemic therapy, and almost all within the first year. The absence of response after that period could be considered as a treatment failure. Maintenance of mitotane therapy in non-responders after 1 year should be questioned in future randomized trials.

Endocrine side-effects of new anticancer therapies: Overall monitoring and conclusions.

The present final consensus statement of the French Society of Endocrinology lays out the assessments that are to be systematically performed before and during anticancer treatment by immunotherapy, tyrosine kinase inhibitors or mTOR inhibitors, even without onset of any endocrinopathy. It also discusses the CTCAE adverse event grading system in oncology and the difficulty of implementing it for endocrine side-effects of these anticancer treatments. Notably, this is why certain treatment steps applied in other side-effects (e.g., high-dose corticosteroids, contraindications to immunotherapy, etc.) need to be discussed before implementation for endocrine side-effects.

Etiopathogeny of Primary Adrenal Hypercortisolism.

Primary adrenal hypercortisolism is mainly due to cortisol-producing adrenocortical adenomas, bilateral micronodular or macronodular disease, and adrenal carcinomas. Important advances in the pathophysiology of primary adrenal hypercortisolism have been made in the last few years, partly through the use of new molecular biology tools. Most adrenal abnormalities leading to increased cortisol production involve somatic or germinal mutations of genes encoding elements of the cyclic AMP/protein kinase A signaling pathway, as shown in adrenal adenomas in 2014. One peculiar condition is primary macronodular adrenal hyperplasia (PMAH), which has given rise to new pathophysiological concepts such as regulation of cortisol secretion by illegitimate ligands through aberrant expression of G protein-coupled transmembrane receptors in adrenal nodules and stimulation of cortisol production by local adrenocorticotropic hormone production through autocrine/paracrine mechanisms. These findings provide a basis for the development of targeted therapies as an alternative to surgery. The recent identification of germinal mutations of ARMC5 in PMAH raises the possibility that this is much more frequently an inherited disease than previously suspected. It also offers the possibility of earlier diagnosis of PMAH by genetic screening and, hopefully, of earlier intervention to prevent the onset of hypercortisolism and its complications. The pathophysiology of Cushing's syndrome associated with a subset of adrenal adenomas, including subclinical cortisol-secreting incidentalomas and adrenal carcinomas, remains to be determined.