Clinical Trials Continue to Propel the Thyroid Cancer Field Further

Lori J. Wirth, MD, associate professor of medicine at Harvard Medical School and medical director of the Center for Head and Neck Cancers at Massachusetts General Hospital, discusses some of the ongoing clinical trials investigating innovative therapies or combinations for the treatment of patients with thyroid cancer.

Transcription:

0:09 | There are a number of ongoing clinical trials that are worth mentioning. One thing that I would mention is that there is an international phase 3 trial comparing dabrafenib [Tafinlar] and trametinib [Mekinist] in the second- or third-line setting for patients with differentiated thyroid cancer, iodine refractory, that is BRAF V600E mutation-positive. This study is enrolling patients who have progressed on a first- or second-line [tyrosine kinase inhibitor] therapy and randomizing patients to dabrafenib plus trametinib vs best supportive care. There is a crossover to active therapy for patients that progress that are on the best supportive care arm of the trial. This is an important international phase 3 trial that is underway.

1:04 | Another set of trials that is innovative and is emerging in the field is clinical trials taking a look at the neoadjuvant setting. When patients present with bulky local regional disease that may not be resectable, particularly getting all gross tumors out there, we think that there is a potential clinical benefit for reducing the tumor burden with neoadjuvant therapy so that the surgeons can do a resection and at least get all the gross tumor out. There is a multicenter clinical trial that has opened at our institution taking a look at lenvatinib [Lenvima] in patients with locally advanced differentiated thyroid cancer. That study is also open at MD Anderson in Houston and Memorial Sloan Kettering in New York.

2:14 | There is also another neoadjuvant trial that is also a multicenter trial that MD Anderson is the lead of taking a look at neoadjuvant selpercatinib [Retevmo] in patients with locally advanced thyroid cancer that is driven by RET alterations, either RET fusions or RET mutations in medullary thyroid cancer, or RET fusions in differentiated thyroid cancer. The neoadjuvant trial space is 1 where I think we are going to be seeing a lot of activity in the future.