Project description:BackgroundEntrectinib is a tropomyosin receptor kinase inhibitor approved for the treatment of neurotrophic tyrosine receptor kinase (NTRK) fusion-positive solid tumours based on single-arm trials. Traditional randomised clinical trials in rare cancers are not feasible; we conducted an intrapatient analysis to evaluate the clinical benefit of entrectinib versus prior standard-of-care systemic therapies.MethodsPatients with locally advanced/metastatic NTRK fusion-positive tumours enrolled in the global phase II, single-arm STARTRK-2 trial were grouped according to prior systemic therapy and response. The key analysis used growth modulation index [GMI; ratio of progression-free survival (PFS) on entrectinib to time to discontinuation (TTD) on the most recent prior therapy]; ratio ≥1.3 indicated clinically meaningful efficacy. Additional analyses investigated TTD and objective response rate (ORR) for entrectinib and prior therapies.ResultsSeventy-one patients were included; 51 received prior systemic therapy. In 38 patients who progressed on prior therapy, ORR was 60.5% (23/38) with entrectinib and 15.8% (6/38) with the most recent prior therapy. Median PFS [11.2 months; 95% confidence interval (CI) 6.7-not estimable] for entrectinib exceeded median TTD (2.9 months; 95% CI 2.0-4.9) for most recent prior therapy. From the intrapatient analysis of GMI, 65.8% had a ratio ≥1.3 and median GMI was 2.53. Consistent results were observed at more stringent GMI thresholds; 60.5% of patients had GMI ≥1.5 or ≥1.8 and 57.9% had GMI ≥2.0.ConclusionsORR was high and PFS was longer on entrectinib versus TTD on prior therapy. Furthermore, 65.8% of patients experienced clinically meaningful benefit based on GMI. This intrapatient analysis demonstrates comparative effectiveness of entrectinib in a rare, heterogeneous adult population.
Project description:A better understanding of cancer biology has led to the development of targeted therapies specifically designed to modulate an altered molecular pathway in the cancer cells or their microenvironment. Despite the identification of molecular targets across cancer types, most of targeted therapies were developed per cancer type. In this ancestral paradigm, randomization was the gold-standard approach for market access. Randomization of large patient populations was feasible for drugs developed in common cancer types but more challenging in rare cancer types. The traditional paradigm of drug development in oncology was further challenged by the ever-expanding molecular segmentation of cancer with ever-smaller subgroups of patients who might benefit from specific targeted therapies or immunotherapies and the identification of molecular alterations against which drugs may be effective across cancer types. In this novel drug development paradigm, novel ways of evaluating the efficacy of drugs are highly needed in these small patient populations. One approach is to use each patient as his/her own control by comparing the efficacy of a drug to the efficacy of prior treatments received. This approach allows to overcome patient heterogeneity, especially in a tissue-agnostic drug development paradigm.
Project description:The recognition that new cancer drugs can be truly tumour-agnostic based on mechanism-of-action is important for paediatric cancers, where access to novel targeted therapies developed for adult indications has sometimes been problematic. The recently approved drug larotrectinib is an excellent case study of the development of a tumour-agnostic drug relevant to children.
Project description:Single-cell transcriptomics has revolutionized our understanding of neurodevelopmental cell identities, yet, predicting a cell type's developmental state from its transcriptome remains a challenge. We perform a meta-analysis of developing human brain datasets comprising over 2.8 million cells, identifying both tissue-level and cell-autonomous predictors of developmental age. While tissue composition predicts age within individual studies, it fails to generalize, whereas specific cell type proportions reliably track developmental time across datasets. Training regularized regression models to infer cell-autonomous maturation, we find that a cell type-agnostic model achieves the highest accuracy (error = 2.6 weeks), robustly capturing developmental dynamics across diverse cell types and datasets. This model generalizes to human neural organoids, accurately predicting normal developmental trajectories (R = 0.91) and disease-induced shifts in vitro. Furthermore, it extends to the developing mouse brain, revealing an accelerated developmental tempo relative to humans. Our work provides a unified framework for comparing neurodevelopment across contexts, model systems, and species.
Project description:Intrapatient tumour heterogeneity is likely a major determinant of clinical outcome in cancer patients. To assess heterogeneity in a minimally invasive manner, methods to perform single circulating tumour cell (CTC) genomics at high resolution are necessary. However, due to the rarity of CTCs, development of such methods is challenging. Here, we developed a modular single CTC analysis pipeline to assess intrapatient heterogeneity by copy number (CN) profiling. To optimize this pipeline, spike-in experiments using MCF-7 breast cancer cells were performed. The VyCAP puncher system was used to isolate single cells. The quality of whole genome amplification (WGA) products generated by REPLI-g and Ampli1™ methods, as well as the results from the Illumina Truseq and the Ampli1™ LowPass library preparation techniques, was compared. Moreover, a bioinformatic pipeline was designed to generate CN profiles from single CTCs. The optimal combination of Ampli1™ WGA and Illumina Truseq library preparation was successfully validated on patient-derived CTCs. In conclusion, we developed a novel modular pipeline to isolate single CTCs and subsequently generate detailed patient-derived CN profiles that allow assessment of intrapatient heterogeneity in future studies.
Project description:The prognosis of patients with solid tumours has remarkably improved with the development of molecular-targeted drugs and immune checkpoint inhibitors. However, the improvements in the prognosis of pancreatic cancer and biliary tract cancer is delayed compared to other carcinomas, and the 5-year survival rates of distal-stage disease are approximately 10 and 20%, respectively. However, a comprehensive analysis of tumour cells using The Cancer Genome Atlas (TCGA) project has led to the identification of various driver mutations. Evidently, few mutations exist across organs, and basket trials targeting driver mutations regardless of the primary organ are being actively conducted. Such basket trials not only focus on the gate keeper-type oncogene mutations, such as HER2 and BRAF, but also focus on the caretaker-type tumour suppressor genes, such as BRCA1/2, mismatch repair-related genes, which cause hereditary cancer syndrome. As oncogene panel testing is a vital approach in routine practice, clinicians should devise a strategy for improved understanding of the cancer genome. Here, the gene mutation profiles of pancreatic cancer and biliary tract cancer have been outlined and the current status of tumour-agnostic therapy in these cancers has been reported.
Project description:Targeted therapies have reshaped the landscape of the development of cancer therapeutics. Recent biomarker-driven, tissue-agnostic clinical trials represent a significant paradigm shift in precision cancer medicine. Despite their growth in preclinical and clinical studies, to date only a few biomarker-driven, tissue-agnostic indications have seen approval by the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA). These approvals include pembrolizumab in microsatellite instability-high or mismatch repair deficient solid tumors, as well as both larotrectinib and entrectinib in NTRK fusion-positive tumors. Complex cancer biology, clinical trial design, and identification of resistance mechanisms represent some of the challenges that future tissue-agnostic therapies have to overcome. In this Review, we present a brief history of the development of tissue-agnostic therapies, comparing the similarities in the approval of pembrolizumab, larotrectinib, and entrectinib for tissue-agnostic indications. We also explore the future of tissue-agnostic cancer therapeutics while identifying important challenges for the future that drugs targeting tissue-agnostic indications will face.
Project description:Though platform trials have been touted for their flexibility and streamlined use of trial resources, their statistical efficiency is not well understood. We fill this gap by establishing their greater efficiency for comparing the relative efficacy of multiple interventions over using several separate, 2-arm trials, where the relative efficacy of an arbitrary pair of interventions is evaluated by contrasting their relative risks as compared to control. In theoretical and numerical studies, we demonstrate that the inference of such a contrast using data from a platform trial enjoys identical or better precision than using data from separate trials, even when the former enrolls substantially fewer participants. This benefit is attributed to the sharing of controls among interventions under contemporaneous randomization. We further provide a novel procedure for establishing the noninferiority of a given intervention relative to the most efficacious of the other interventions under evaluation, where this procedure is adaptive in the sense that it need not be a priori known which of these other interventions is most efficacious. Our numerical studies show that this testing procedure can attain substantially better power when the data arise from a platform trial rather than multiple separate trials. Our results are illustrated using data from two monoclonal antibody trials for the prevention of HIV.
Project description:PurposeRipretinib is a switch-control tyrosine kinase inhibitor that broadly inhibits KIT and platelet-derived growth factor receptor α kinase signalling. Ripretinib showed preliminary efficacy in patients with advanced gastrointestinal stromal tumour (GIST) in a phase I study across a range of doses. Results were confirmed in the phase III INVICTUS study, and ripretinib 150 mg once daily (QD) was subsequently approved as a ≥fourth-line therapy. Here, we report the phase I study results of intrapatient dose escalation (IPDE) in patients with GIST treated across second, third and later lines of therapy.MethodsPatients with advanced GIST who experienced disease progression (PD) at ripretinib 150 mg QD could dose escalate to 150 mg twice daily (BID). Progression-free survival (PFS) 1 was calculated from the date of the first dose of ripretinib 150 mg QD to PD (as per Response Evaluation Criteria in Solid Tumours 1.1); PFS2 was from the date of IPDE (150 mg BID) to PD or death. Treatment-emergent adverse events (TEAEs) were summarised by dosing periods and compared descriptively.ResultsOf 142 patients with GIST receiving ripretinib 150 mg QD, 67 underwent IPDE. IPDE provided benefit across all lines of therapy; the median PFS2 was 5.6, 3.3 and 4.6 months for patients on second-, third- and ≥fourth-line therapy, respectively. A partial metabolic response after IPDE was demonstrated in 13 of 37 patients with available positron emission tomography scans. TEAEs reported at both doses were similar.ConclusionRipretinib IPDE after PD provided continued clinical benefit in advanced GIST across second, third and later lines of therapy with a similar safety profile to that observed with the QD regimen.