The National Cancer Institute Cancer Therapy Evaluation Program approved the following clinical research studies last month. For further information, contact the principal investigator listed.
Two Johns Hopkins prostate cancer researchers found significant disparities when they submitted identical patient samples to two different commercial liquid biopsy providers.
The Hokusai-VTE CANCER study evaluating oral edoxaban (known as Savaysa in the U.S. and Lixiana outside the U.S.) found edoxaban to be non-inferior to subcutaneous injectable LMWH dalteparin for the treatment of cancer-associated VTE or major bleeding.
Patients with early stage lung cancer live longer when they receive a lobectomy rather than a less extensive operation or radiation treatment, according to a study published in The Annals of Thoracic Surgery.
A phase IIb clinical trial for Galera Therapeutics' GC4419 met its primary endpoint, demonstrating a significant (p=0.024), clinically meaningful and dose-dependent reduction in the duration of severe oral mucositis in patients with head and neck cancer receiving chemoradiation.
A pivotal phase II clinical study of cemiplimab, an investigational human antibody targeting PD-1, demonstrated an overall response rate of 46.3% in 82 patients with advanced cutaneous squamous cell carcinoma.
Genentech's phase III IMmotion151 study met its co-primary endpoint ofprogression-free survival and demonstrated that the combination of Tecentriq (atezolizumab) and Avastin (bevacizumab) provided a statistically significant and clinically meaningful reduction in the risk of disease worsening or death in people whose disease expressed the PD-L1 (PD-L1 expression ≥1 percent) protein compared with sunitinib for the first-line treatment of people who have advanced or metastatic renal cell carcinoma.
MURANO, a randomized phase III study sponsored by Abbvie, showed that patients with relapsed or refractory chronic lymphocytic leukemia achieved significantly prolonged median progression-free survival with Venclexta/Venclyxto (venetoclax) in combination with Rituxan (rituximab) [median PFS, not reached], compared with bendamustine in combination with Rituxan [median PFS, 17.0 months; hazard ratio, 0.17; 95% CI, 0.11–0.25; P<0.0001].
Juno Therapeutics Inc., a biopharmaceutical company developing cellular immunotherapies for the treatment of cancer, released additional data from the TRANSCEND study of JCAR017 (lisocabtagene maraleucel; liso-cel) in patients with relapsed or refractory aggressive B-cell non-Hodgkin lymphoma in a presentation at the 59th American Society of Hematology Annual Meeting and Exposition.
The phase III EMBRACA trial in patients with germline BRCA1/2-positive locally advanced and/or metastatic breast cancer demonstrated superior progression-free survival in patients treated with talazoparib, compared to patients who received physician's choice standard of care chemotherapy.