|
 The announcement, made at the American Society for Clinical Oncology
meeting on Monday, is meant to use approved or experimental drugs to
develop insights that will ultimately enable doctors to prescribe
drugs based on the molecular cause of the cancer, rather than the
organ in which it was originally discovered.
Overall, trial investigators plan to sequence the DNA of about 3,000
patients nationwide during the full course of the trial, known as
NCI-MATCH. Of those, they plan to enroll about 1,000 patients in the
various drug treatment arms in the trial.
"What we're trying to do is sequence their tumor for various cancer
drivers," said Dr. Barbara Conley, associate director of the NCI’s
Cancer Diagnosis Program. "If they have that driver, they will be
able to get the drug that was chosen to attack that driver."
Patients will be treated as long as their tumor shrinks or remains
stable.
Drugs being used in NCI-MATCH include both approved and experimental
agents that are being contributed by a number of companies.
Initial agents in the trial will include Pfizer Inc's lung cancer
drug crizotinib, sold as Xalkori; Boehringer Ingelheim's afatinib,
sold as Gilotrif, Roche's TDM1 drug Kadcyla and two investigational
drugs: AstraZeneca's AZD9291, a drug being tested in non-small cell
lung cancer, and Verastem's VS-6063 or defactinib, a drug being
tested in mesothelioma.
Enrollment in NCI-MATCH will be available through 2,400 sites
participating in the National Clinical Trials Network.
[to top of second column] |
Separately, ASCO said a trial called TAPUR would help patients gain
access to new drugs based on the genetic makeup of their tumors.
It said TAPUR will provide 13 approved treatments for free. Drug
companies providing treatments include: AstraZeneca, Bristol-Myers
Squibb , Eli Lilly and Co , Roche's<ROG.VX> Genentech and Pfizer.
Genetic profiling gives doctors a read-out of molecular targets
driving a patient's tumors. Often these occur in locations other
than the organ in which a drug is approved. While doctors can
prescribe approved drugs off-label, insurance companies are
reluctant to pay for them.
(Story refiled to remove reference to Novartis' ceritinib in
paragraph 7, which is not in the trial)
(Reporting by Julie Steenhuysen; Editing by W Simon and Christian
Plumb)
[© 2015 Thomson Reuters. All rights
reserved.] Copyright 2015 Reuters. All rights reserved. This material may not be published,
broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
 |
