A Promising Development in Recurrent Ovarian Cancer in Women

A study recently published in The Lancet Oncology investigated trebananib given with chemotherapy in recurrent epithelial ovarian cancer. The findings indicated that it helped prolong patients' survival without a significant difference in severe side effects.

Ovarian cancer is one of the most common gynecological cancers in women after breast cancer. Because symptoms usually appear after it has spread to other organs, it is generally diagnosed at advanced stages and causes the most deaths among gynecological cancers. Ovarian cancers are classified by their cell of origin, with epithelial ovarian cancer being the most common type.

Surgery and chemotherapy are frequently used to treat epithelial ovarian cancer, depending on the stage. More recently, antiangiogenic targeted treatments have also produced promising results in ovarian and certain other cancers. These treatments use drugs that inhibit angiogenesis, the formation of new blood vessels by cancer cells, an important contributor to cancer development. One such drug is trebananib, which acts on angiopoietin, a stimulatory factor in angiogenesis. A recent study investigated whether adding trebananib to paclitaxel, the conventional chemotherapy for recurrent epithelial ovarian cancer, would provide benefit.

The study, published in The Lancet Oncology, evaluated 919 women with recurrent epithelial ovarian cancer from 32 countries. They were divided into 2 groups: 458 received paclitaxel alone, and 461 received paclitaxel plus trebananib. Both groups received regular weekly treatment and were followed for approximately 10 months. Time without disease progression was 7.2 months in the trebananib group, compared with 5.4 months among patients receiving chemotherapy alone. There was no significant difference between the groups in severe side effects associated with trebananib.

In conclusion, the study shows that trebananib prolongs time without disease progression in patients with recurrent epithelial ovarian cancer. Although this measure is less valuable than overall survival when assessing a drug's benefit, delaying progression for a time without a major difference in side effects makes the drug worth further investigation.