New Clinical Trial Format Aims To Improve Study Of Cancer Drugs

Charity organization Cancer Research UK announced that it partnering with pharmaceutical companies AstraZeneca and Pfizer to advance research into personalized treatments for cancer.                                                                          

The partnership will form a pioneering trial for patients with advanced lung cancer, called the National Lung Matrix trial. This new trial could potentially change the way cancer drugs are studied, saving time and money in the process of bringing these valuable drugs to the market, Reuters says.

The trial will allow researchers unprecedented access to drug libraries developed by AstraZeneca and Pfizer. This will enable testing of several drugs at the same time in a single trial. Researchers will use lung tumor genetics to identify small populations of patients which are more likely to benefit from a specific drug, taking personalized treatment of cancer a step closer to patients’ needs.

This trial also eliminates the standard randomization where some participants are given a “control” substance for comparison. Researchers have been questioning the need for randomization in a trial studying patients with incurable cancer, Reuters says, especially if certain treatments are genetically more likely to work than others in certain patients.

Trial researchers will assess patients’ response to treatments and identify promising drugs against cancer. Up to fourteen candidates could be included in the National Lung Matrix trial. These include up to 12 from AstraZeneca and its biologics research arm MedImmune, and two candidates from Pfizer. The drugs target very specific and rare mutations, offering options for patients with very limited treatment choices.

Harpal Kumar, Cancer Research UK’s CEO, said, “This is a very important step forward in the fight against cancer. This partnership is exciting because we’re trying to achieve something that none of us could manage alone – targeting treatments towards the patients who we know are the most likely to benefit. It’s also a program that can uniquely be carried out in the UK, because of our National Health Service and the network of Centres across the country supported by Cancer Research UK... This work represents a new approach to delivering stratified medicine research and this collaboration between Cancer Research UK, AstraZeneca, Pfizer and the NHS will be key to overcoming the challenges of delivering it.”

The National Lung Matrix trial will be jointly funded by Cancer Research UK, AstraZeneca, and Pfizer, with support from NHS. Total funding represents about£25 million worth of research. The trial is scheduled to open later this year at centers across the UK.