MITO8: Re-treat with platinum-based chemo for recurrent OC
AT THE 2016 ASCO ANNUAL MEETING
Dr. Maurie Markman of Cancer Treatment Centers of America in Boca Raton, Fla., the invited discussant, praised the work of Dr. Pignata and his colleagues, calling their study “elegant,” and “an extraordinary effort.”
“In this unbelievably important analysis, the hypothesis was flat-out wrong,” he said.
The study is an example of “a simple, provocative, and potentially highly clinically relevant hypothesis that should be able to be quickly tested in either a cooperative group setting, in multiple institutions interested in gynecologic malignancies ... when or very shortly after it is initially proposed,” he said.
Waiting 20 years is unacceptable, he said, adding: “This is tragic, this length of time to get an answer. And I must ask ... how many ovarian cancer patients over this many-year period have received second-line chemotherapy based on this conceptual approach, and may have actually been harmed?”
To prevent such outcomes in the future, Dr. Markman proposed heavier reliance on “nonrandomized population-based studies including real-world patients managed by a variety of approaches with securely privacy-protected data included within a public database,” to test noninvestigational approaches to disease management.
“And for this database, I would propose ASCO’s CancerLinq,” he said.
Dr. Pignata reported receiving honoraria from, and serving as a consultant or adviser for AstraZeneca, PharmaMar, and Roche, and receiving research funding from Roche. Dr. Markman is a consultant or advisor for Amgen, Celgene, CritiTech, and Pfizer; is on the speakers bureau for AstraZeneca and Genentech/Roche, and has provided expert testimony for several entities
