Sarcoma Immunotherapy: Past Approaches and Future Directions

Table 1

Adjuvant interferon studies.

Study name	Patients	Type of sarcoma	Type of interferon	Dose/schedule	Outcome
Karolinska Hospital series	After surgical resection, 89 patients	Osteosarcoma	Interferon-α	Cohort 1 (70 patients) 3 × 10^6 IU daily ×1 month, followed by 3×/week, 17 months; Cohort 2 (19 patients) 3 × 10^6 IU daily for 3–5 years	10-year metastatic free survival: 39% (95% CI 29–49%); 10-year sarcoma specific survival: 43% (95% CI 33–54%) [65, 66]; Median time to metastasis 8 months (range 1–60 months); 𝑃 value not specified
COSS-80	100 patients after preoperative chemotherapy and surgical resection were randomized +/− interferon	Osteosarcoma	Interferon-β	100,000 U/kg for 22 weeks (2 injections weekly ×2 weeks, daily ×4 weeks, weekly ×16 weeks)	30-month continuous disease-free survival: 77% interferon arm versus 73% noninterferon arm [67]; Log rank test, 𝑧=0.315
EURAMOS 1	715 patients that had good response to preoperative chemotherapy were randomized to postoperative chemotherapy +/− interferon	Osteosarcoma	Pegylated interferon-α2b	0.5–1.0 μg/kg/week for 2 years	Primary endpoint: event-free survival (EFS) [68]; 77% who received INT were disease free at 3 years compared to 74%; Hazard ratio for EFS from adjusted Cox model was 0.82 (95% CI 0.61–1.11; 𝑃=0.201) in favor of chemotherapy + interferon