NCI Cinical trial – July -open to adults with solid tumors – MATCH

The National Cancer Institute (NCI) announced today a new precision medicine trial called NCI-MATCH (Molecular Analysis for Therapy Choice) that will be open for patient enrollment in July. The NCI-MATCH trial is the largest trial in the U.S. that will use precision medicine based on genetic screening of tumors.

The trial explores treating patients based on the molecular profiles of their tumors regardless of their cancer type.
The trial is for adults with solid tumors (including rare tumors) and lymphomas that no longer respond to standard treatment and have progressed on standard therapy.
Patients will be “matched” by a specific abnormality in their tumors with a drug or drug combination that targets the specific mutation in the cancer.
More than 20 treatments will be investigated in this Phase II trial. Ten small sub-studies (arms) will be open in July with 10 more arms opening soon after.
Patients will be able to access the trial at up to 2,400 locations across the U.S. at sites that participate in NCI’s National Clinical Trials Network (NCTN).
The study was co-developed by NCI, part of the National Institutes of Health, and the ECOG-ACRIN Cancer Research Group, part of the NCI-sponsored NCTN. It is being led by ECOG-ACRIN.

For more information, contact NCI’s Cancer Information Service at 1-800-4-CANCER or visit http://www.cancer.gov.
—

Watch Research Advocacy 101, a video resource developed to provide information about research advocacy at NCI!

You will learn about the MATCH initiative with this link;
http://dctd.cancer.gov/MajorInitiatives … dicine.htm
http://deainfo.nci.nih.gov/advisory/nca … roshow.pdf

The NCI-MATCH (“Molecular Analysis for Therapy Choice”) trial is led by ECOG-ACRIN with NCI and the National Clinical Trials Network. This trial will examine the molecular features of tumors in approximately 3,000 patients with solid tumors or lymphoma who have progressed on standard therapy, and hopes to match at least 1,000 of those patients to a treatment with a targeted drug or drug combination. Patients will need to have a biopsy, which will be used to screen for abnormalities in up to 200 genes known to be involved in cancer and/or to predict response to a particular drug or drug combination.

Because any one molecular abnormality may be present in only 5-10% of patients with solid tumors or lymphomas, MATCH will have many “arms”, each with a drug treatment for a particular molecular abnormality or group of molecular abnormalities. Each targeted therapy will be studied in a single-arm phase II trial, with NCI-MATCH functioning as an umbrella protocol for these trials. Patients with a match to a drug treatment will stay on that drug treatment until their disease progresses (or the treatment becomes toxic), at which point they will, if they desire, undergo another biopsy to look for additional molecular features that could match them to a new targeted drug. Under certain circumstances (e.g., non-response with rapid progression), patients who have more than one “actionable” genetic abnormality will be able to match to a treatment addressing the second molecular abnormality without a repeat biopsy. Additionally, NCI-MATCH will compare pre-treatment biopsies to post-treatment biopsies to study why some tumors develop resistance to cancer treatment.

Molecular tests to be performed on the tumors include genetic sequencing using a panel of about 200 genes (on the Ion Torrent PGM™ system), as well as other diagnostic assays for specific molecular features. Biopsies will be sent to a central laboratory at MD Anderson Cancer Center in Houston, TX. Four CLIA-certified laboratories will perform the tests — Frederick National Laboratory for Cancer Research, MD Anderson Cancer Center, Yale Cancer Center, and Massachusetts General Hospital.