SWOG Launches National Immunotherapy Clinical Trial for Rare Cancers - The ASCO Post

 

Number of New Cases and Deaths per 100,000: The number of new cases of ovarian cancer was 11.9 per 100,000 women per year. The number of deaths was 7.5 per 100,000 women per year. These rates are age-adjusted and based on 2009-2013 cases and deaths.
 Lifetime Risk of Developing Cancer: Approximately 1.3 percent of women will be diagnosed with ovarian cancer at some point during their lifetime, based on 2011-2013 data.
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The ASCO Post

Posted: 1/26/2017

People with rare cancers now have the option of joining a national clinical trial testing leading-edge immunotherapies for a wide variety of tumor types. It’s the first federally funded immunotherapy trial devoted to rare cancers. Despite their name, rare cancers make up more than 20% of cancers diagnosed worldwide.

The trial is called DART (Dual Anti–CTLA-4 and Anti­–PD-1 Blockade in Rare Tumors) and is managed by SWOG, the cancer clinical trials group that is part of the National Cancer Institute’s (NCI) National Clinical Trials Network (NCTN). The trial is sponsored by the NCI and being conducted under the NCI collaborative agreements with Bristol-Myers Squibb for ipilimumab (Yervoy) and nivolumab (Opdivo).

DART and NCI-MATCH
The trial draws on the design and takes advantage of the scale of another landmark trial offered through the NCTN, NCI-MATCH (NCI-Molecular Analysis for Therapy Choice), a precision medicine trial open at more than 1,000 clinical sites. Codesigned by the ECOG-ACRIN Cancer Research Group and the NCI, and led by ECOG-ACRIN, NCI-MATCH is the most sweeping precision medicine trial in the United States. NCI-MATCH uses a customized tumor gene testing method to match patients with any solid tumor, along with lymphoma and myeloma, to multiple targeted treatments. Currently, there are 24 treatments offered, with plans to add about 10 more. Since NCI-MATCH was launched in August 2015, more than 2,500 patients have completed tumor gene testing out of the 6,000 patients intended to be screened. As of December 1, 2016, nearly 300 patients have entered treatment arms.
According to the definition used for the DART trial, rare cancers are those diseases with less than a 6 in 100,000 incidences per year. These include dozens of types, including cancers in nerves, glands, bones, and skin. But only certain patients will be eligible to enroll in DART. To join, patients must be registered to NCI-MATCH. If they don’t have a treatment option under NCI-MATCH, or if they didn’t respond to treatment on that trial, and their rare cancer is eligible, they can enroll......