A specific drug combination may have significant benefits for treatment-resistant patients with ovarian or lung cancer, British researchers announced today.
The combination of the targeted drug vistusertib along with the chemotherapy drug paclitaxel was tested by a team at the Institute of Cancer Research, London, UK, and The Royal Marsden NHS Foundation Trust.
In an early clinical trial, it was found to be safe and well tolerated with manageable side-effects. It appeared to halt the spread of advanced cancers for six months in over half of women with ovarian cancer and a third of patients with lung cancer.
The trial recruited 25 women with high-grade, serous ovarian cancer and 40 patients with squamous non-small cell lung cancer, at 11 UK cancer centres.
Professor Udai Banerji and colleagues report their findings today (22 August) in Annals of Oncology.
They say these results "far exceed what is expected with standard treatments in patients with advanced disease who have already had, and have now become resistant to, standard treatment".
The team are now carrying out a phase II trial of the approach.
They say the combination was discovered because research showed chemotherapy-resistant ovarian cancers typically have high levels of molecule a called p-S6K. These two drugs prevent cancer cells from using p-S6K to grow and resist chemotherapy.
Professor Banerji comments: "We combined chemotherapy with a targeted drug which blocks the way cancer cells react to treatment in order to survive. The phase II clinical trial of this drug is going well and I very much look forward to seeing the initial results, coming out later this year."
Banerji, U. et al. Annals of Oncology 22 August 2018
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