A new study, the results of which were unveiled at a congress of the European Society for Medical Oncology, offers new hope to women who have a particularly aggressive form of ovarian cancer.
Researchers at the UK Institute of Cancer Research and the Royal Marsden NHS Foundation Trust administered two drugs, VS-6766 and defactinib, to 24 women with low-grade serous ovarian cancer.
Forty-six percent of the participants in this stage 1 study saw their tumors shrink in size. The results were even more encouraging in patients with a mutation in the KRAS gene: in this case, the treatment resulted in tumor reduction in 64% of the subjects.
The results are considered so encouraging that a stage 2 study has already been initiated.
“We can no longer treat all ovarian cancers with the same treatments,” responded Dr. Diane Provencher, of the CHUM. You have to really personalize things. “
Personalized medicine, or precision medicine, has indeed captured the attention of the medical community for several years. The strategy is to identify the genetic characteristics of the patient and their disease, in order to then determine which treatment will potentially benefit them the most.
Low-grade serous ovarian cancer usually occurs in younger patients. Less than 15% of patients with it would respond favorably to chemotherapy or hormone therapy.
“The famous phrase of ‘personalize your treatment’ takes on even more importance because indeed, low grade ovarian cancer, even though I persist in wanting to treat it with chemo on top of chemo , it doesn’t work, ”said Dr. Provencher.
“We really had to find something else. Low grade is one of our orphan tumors for which, in recent years, there has been a lot of molecular stuff analysis. “
Especially since cancer cells are “particularly bright,” she added, in that they often end up developing resistance to the treatments that are used to attack them.
In the case of the new British study, the researchers found that the two drugs administered together could be effective in women who had already been treated.
“It’s really a good stage because we still have the possibility of giving a surplus of survival,” applauded Dr. Provencher.
Watch video
Reference-feedproxy.google.com