Tuesday, June 4, 2013

ASCO from a Distance

I've attended the ASCO Annual meeting in person for the past two years. This year I observed from a distance checking on the latest ovarian Cancer news by following ASCO post on Facebook, Tweets by those I follow and the Daily news e-mail. I also checked the online listing of abstracts for ovarian cancer. I've put together a few abstracts I found most interesting.


Randomized, double-blind, phase III trial of pazopanib versus placebo in women who have not progressed after first-line chemotherapy for advanced epithelial ovarian, fallopian tube, or primary peritoneal cancer (AEOC): Results of an international Intergroup trial (AGO-OVAR16).
Pazopanib is a multikinase inhibitor and an oral formulation. The 940 patients in the randomized trial were initially diagnosed Stage III or IV and had 5 or more cycles of platinum- taxane chemotherapy. Women who took the pazaponib had an average  Progression Free Survival (PFS) of 5.6 months longer than women give a placebo. Patients did experience some adverse reactions. The Study concluded"Conclusions: Pazopanib maintenance therapy provided a statistically significant and clinically meaningful PFS benefit in patients with AEOC; OS data are not mature. The safety profile of pazopanib in this setting was consistent with its established profile. Clinical trial information: NCT00866697. "

My thoughts: Will the overall survival (OS) for the women in the pazopanib arm correlate to the PFS time? Will OS be 5 months? longer? shorter?
note:After reading a Medpage article and comments, I learned that the 800 mg pill taken daily cost $54 each.



The first treatment for Ovarian Cancer is normally Primary surgery( PS)  followed by adjuvant platinum-taxane chemotherapy(P-CT). This study compared survival rates for PS/ P-CT versus neoadjuvant chemotherapy (NACT) where chemo is given first and then surgery occurs after there is tumor shrinkage. There were 550 women in the study. The median OS was 22.8 months for PS vs 24.5 months for NACT. They study concluded " NACT was associated with increased optimal debulking, less early mortality and similar survival in this poor prognosis group. CHORUS results are consistent with EORTC55971 and strengthen evidence that NACT is a viable alternative to PS. Clinical trial information: ISRCTN74802813"

My thoughts: Knowing that there are no issues with NACT is important information for doctors to have when they are deciding what is best for their patients.

Comparative effectiveness of treatments for recurrent ovarian cancer.
In the past recurrent OC has been treated with chemotherapy but in some cases secondary cytoreductive surgery has been done (SCS). This study compared survival between chemotherapy vs SCS vs both or neither. There were 1623 women in the study. "Conclusions: Patients with recurrent ovarian cancer treated with both secondary surgery and chemotherapy survive longer than patients treated with either chemotherapy or surgery. Women who are Black, or older at time of recurrence have worse survival. "

My Thoughts:After reading this abstract I am happy I  chose SCS followed by chemotherapy when I recurred in 2008.

I with continue to read through the abstracts and will share more of my favorites in the future.

Dee
Every Day is a Blessing!

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