Oral Paclitaxel as Neoadjuvant Therapy in Elderly NSCLC: A Phase II Trial

This study is a multicenter, single-arm Phase II clinical trial, aiming to explore the safety and preliminary efficacy of oral paclitaxel solution combined with immune checkpoint inhibitors as a neoadjuvant regimen in elderly patients aged 70-85 years with non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC). A total of 75 eligible elderly NSCLC patients who need neoadjuvant treatment are planned to be enrolled. The study takes Shanghai Pulmonary Hospital as the main center, Zhejiang Cancer Hospital and Guangdong Provincial People's Hospital as sub-centers, adopts a single-arm study design, and the research subjects are elderly NSCLC patients who need neoadjuvant treatment. The core indicators for efficacy evaluation include pathological complete response rate (pCR), major pathological response rate (MPR, residual tumor cells ≤10%), imaging response rate (according to RECIST 1.1 criteria), 2-year event-free survival rate (EFS), 2-year overall survival rate (OS), surgical resection rate, and R0 resection rate; safety evaluation mainly observes the incidence of adverse events. The statistical methods adopt the relevant specifications for single-arm exploratory studies. Efficacy analysis is carried out in the full analysis set and per-protocol set, and safety analysis is performed using the safety analysis set; for continuous variables, paired t-test or Wilcoxon signed-rank test is used according to the distribution; categorical variables are analyzed descriptively; for the main rate-type outcome indicators, the incidence rate and 95% confidence interval (Clopper-Pearson method) are reported; survival outcome indicators are estimated using the Kaplan-Meier method and relevant parameters are reported.