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ANZUP at the American Society of Clinical Oncology Meeting
Each year more than 40,000 oncology professionals from around the world come together for 5 days in June in Chicago USA for the American Society of Clinical Oncology (ASCO) Annual Meeting. This meeting allows the oncology community to stay up to date on new clinical cancer advances in every area of cancer research, gain real-time insights from worldrenowned faculty, and connect with one of the largest, most diverse audiences in global oncology.
The ASCO Annual Meeting is one of the most important conferences for presenting the latest, most practice-changing research in cancer care. Through this conference, the cancer community learns how to better care for, support, and treat people with cancer.
At the most recent ASCO Annual Meeting held from 3 – 7 June, ANZUP was in attendance to give two oral presentations and two poster presentations. The presentations included updates on the prostate cancer ENZAMET and TheraP trials, and poster presentations for a kidney cancer trial called UNISoN, and another prostate cancer trial, DASL-HiCAP.
ENZAMET
At the ASCO 2022 Annual Meeting in Chicago, ANZUP presented the planned analysis results of the ENZAMET study, after patients had been followed on average for more than 5 years.
ENZAMET showed that people with advanced, hormone-sensitive prostate cancer who receive enzalutamide added to standard treatment are 30% less likely to die compared to people receiving standard treatment alone.
Study Co-Chair and Board Chair of ANZUP, Professor Ian Davis, said, “ENZAMET is a unique collaboration of clinicians and scientists from Australia, New Zealand, Ireland, UK, Canada, and the USA, all coming together to work with the community to find better ways of treating prostate cancer. ENZAMET won the 2020 Trial of the Year Award, as well as awards for community involvement, and for high quality statistical conduct. Now we have very mature results confirming that the benefit of enzalutamide treatment persists even after much longer followup, and we continue to see other informative results emerging from this very important trial.”
PROFESSOR IAN DAVIS PRESENTING AT ASCO
TheraP
Professor Michael Hofman presented the three-year follow-up results from ANZUP’s TheraP trial - the first randomised trial comparing 177Lu-PSMA-617 to standard of care chemotherapy.
TheraP is the first randomised trial comparing 177LuPSMA-617 (Lu-PSMA), a novel radioactive treatment, to the current standard-of-care chemotherapy called cabazitaxel for people with metastatic castrationresistant prostate cancer. These people had disease that had already progressed after standard chemotherapy.
This unique treatment involved two distinct parts. Firstly, a PET scan is used to ‘map’ the cancer. This is done by injecting a radioactive molecule called gallium-68 attached to a small molecule that rapidly localises to prostate specific membrane antigen (PSMA) on the surface of prostate cancer cells in the body. The result is the cancer cells ‘light up’, showing exactly where the disease is and enables identification of patients that may benefit from this new therapy. The second part is the therapy itself: the Lu-177 radionuclide is attached to a similar molecule used in the scanning process, and
Lu-PSMA is administered to the patient, targeting the tumours and killing the cancer cells while minimising damage to surrounding tissue. Study Chair Prof. Michael Hofman said “Three-year follow-up of the TheraP study provides compelling evidence that Lutetium-177 PSMA-617 is a new treatment option for people with prostate cancer, providing an alternative to cabazitaxel chemotherapy with better patient reported outcomes and lower side effects.”
PROFESSOR MICHAEL HOFMAN PRESENTING TheraP RESULTS AT ASCO.
UNISoN
The UNISoN trial aims to test whether new immune treatments can help people with rare kidney cancer (‘non-clear cell’ cancer). Non-clear cell cancer represents approximately 25% of people with kidney cancer; and because it is rare there are no treatments currently reimbursed in Australia.
The UNISoN trial will test immune treatments in two different ways; firstly, it will investigate how well one immune treatment (nivolumab) works alone. If this is unhelpful by itself, then people can continue taking nivolumab but also add in a 2nd immune treatment (ipilimumab). The trial hopes to discover how many people will benefit from one drug alone. By undertaking detailed laboratory testing of people’s cancer samples, it is hoped we also learn who will benefit from taking both treatments together.
The UNISoN study poster was presented at ASCO by ANZUP Chair, Professor Ian Davis and focussed on the final study report. The report demonstrated that the primary endpoint of the UNISoN study was not met as a minority of participants benefited from treatment with ipilimumab and nivolumab after failure of nivolumab therapy alone. Whilst some participants did gain meaningful benefit from this approach, further research is required to explore other strategies.
PROFESSOR IAN DAVIS PRESENTING THE UNISoN POSTER AT ASCO
DASL-HiCAP
The purpose of the DASL-HiCAP prostate cancer trial is to see if a new tablet drug, darolutamide, combined with the current best treatments, can improve outcomes for people with high-risk prostate cancer that has not spread beyond the prostate area.
The Study Co-Chair, Professor Chris Sweeney presented a ‘Trial in Progress’ poster at ASCO. This poster was based on trial data taken as of 10 May 2022. The data was able to show that there are currently 530 patients enrolled in the study, which totals 50% of total patient recruitment. The study is also open at 56 participating centres and is recruiting internationally across Australia, New Zealand, Canada, USA, Ireland, and the United Kingdom.
PROFESSOR CHRIS SWEENEY AND THE DASL-HICAP POSTER
