Hundreds of women could benefit from a combination of ovarian cancer drugs that doubles the chance of remission
- Low-grade severe ovarian cancer disproportionately affects younger women
- Condition is notoriously difficult to detect and treatment options are few
- Researchers saw tumors halved after prescribing a new drug combination
Hundreds of women with ovarian cancer could benefit from a new drug combination that appears to be twice as effective as existing treatments.
Low-grade serous ovarian cancer (LGSOC) disproportionately affects younger women, is notoriously difficult to detect, and has few effective treatment options.
Researchers from the Royal Marsden NHS Foundation Trust and the Institute of Cancer Research, London, conducted the trial, which saw tumors shrink significantly in nearly half (45 percent) of those who received avutometinib in addition to defactinib.
Experts said early results, presented at the American Society of Clinical Oncology conference in Chicago, were “great news” and could change patients’ treatment.
Around 700 women in the UK are diagnosed with LGSOC each year – most between the ages of 40 and 60.
Symptoms — including bloating, changes in bowel habits, and severe back, pelvic, and abdominal pain — can be misdiagnosed, causing the cancer to be detected late.
Hundreds of women with ovarian cancer could benefit from a new drug combination that appears to be twice as effective as existing treatments
Ovarian cancer symptoms — including bloating, changes in bowel habits, and severe back, pelvic, and abdominal pain — can be misdiagnosed, causing cancer to be detected late
Treatment often includes surgery followed by chemotherapy and hormone therapy. But response rates are typically poor, with the most effective drug having only a 26 percent success rate.
Avutometinib works by blocking proteins that help control cancer growth and survival. Studies have shown that it can become ineffective over time, with tumors developing resistance to treatment.
However, when combined with defactinib – which is designed to fight a protein that promotes drug resistance – avutometinib works more efficiently.
Patients were considered to have responded to treatment if their overall tumor size had shrunk by at least 30 percent.
Study co-author Dr. Kathleen Moore, of the Stephenson Cancer Center in Oklahoma, said the large increase in response rates for the new drug combination was “very exciting.”
She said: ‘The beauty of the combination is that you can outsmart two ways in which these tumors become resistant and use a drug that is more effective. This response rate is the best reported for any drug in LGSOC.”
The findings could be especially important for patients whose cancer cannot be surgically removed, who currently have few other options. The results of the drug combination, which was given to 29 women, were particularly promising in those with the KRAS gene mutation, with six in 10 seeing their tumors shrink.
Meanwhile, almost a third (29 percent) without the mutation also had an encouraging response — an improvement over standard treatment.
Those who previously received other types of therapies also saw their cancer shrink with treatment with the drug combination, according to interim results.
Dr. Susana Banerjee, a medical oncologist consultant at the Royal Marsden, who led the study, said: ‘These early results could be fantastic news for women.’