Conference Coverage

VIDEO: Routine genomic testing identifies actionable alterations in 52% of tumors

Publish date: June 5, 2017
By
Kari Oakes

 

AT ASCO 2017

CHICAGO – Genomic testing for all cancer patients was shown to be feasible and productive in a recent study, with a trend toward longer survival among those patients who received recommended targeted treatment.

Molecular profiling, including genetic sequencing and copy number variation analysis, was performed in 1944 tumors from patients with advanced tumors enrolled in the profiLER study. Of the tumors screened, mutations deemed actionable were identified in 1,004 (52%), with 394 patients having two or more actionable targets, and the remainder having one identified targeted treatment. A molecular targeted treatment was recommended for 676 patients (35% of those tested).

“We showed that the patients who did receive the molecular targeted agents were doing better in terms of overall survival,” said Olivier Tredan, MD, PhD, the study’s lead investigator. Noting that these are trends as the trial was not randomized, he reported that the overall survival (OS) for those receiving targeted treatments was 53.7% at 3 years, compared with 46.1% for those who did not receive targeted treatment. The trend continued out to 5 years, with the OS for the targeted treatment group at 34.8%, compared with 28.1% OS for those who did not receive targeted treatment, he said at the annual meeting of the American Society of Clinical Oncology.

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Only 143 patients received the recommended targeted treatments. “The problem is that most of the patients had the molecular screening too late in their history. What we want to do is screen the patients in an earlier setting,” said Dr. Tredan, chair of the department of medical oncology at the Centre Léon-Bérard, Lyon, France.

Many patients either were too sick to receive the recommended treatment or died before they could be treated, Dr. Tredan said in a video interview.

Of the patients who did receive targeted treatment, over 60% received mTOR inhibitors. The next most common therapies were multitarget tyrosine kinase receptor (TKR)–inhibiting/antiangiogenic therapies, received by about one-third of patients. Fewer than one in five patients received any other therapies. Tumor types were colorectal, gynecological, breast, head and neck carcinomas, sarcomas, and brain tumors.

A new randomized clinical study, profiLER 2, is planned. The new study will pit a 315-gene commercial test against the 69-gene test used in profiLER 1, to see whether casting a wider net yields more targets for therapy.

Still, knowing that a treatment might help is useful only if the patient can actually receive the drug, said Dr. Tredan. “What we want is more molecular targeted agent initiation, so we need to have larger screening programs, but we need also to have access to novel targeted agents.”

Dr. Tredan reported financial relationships with Bayer, GlaxoSmithKline, and Novartis.

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