Leveraging Biomarkers to Advance Endometrial Cancer Care

Ramez N. Eskander, MD, assistant professor of obstetrics, gynecology, and reproductive sciences, UC San Diego Health, discusses additional targetable biomarkers that could be addressed in a similar combination as what was seen in the phase 3 NRG-GY018/KEYNOTE-868 trial (NCT03914612) with standard of care chemotherapy.

During the Society of Gynecologic Oncology (SGO) 2024 Annual Meeting on Women’s Cancer, Eskander presented data from the phase 3 NRG-GY018/KEYNOTE-868 trial which evaluated the combination of pembrolizumab (Keytruda) plus chemotherapy. Findings showed that there was a positive overall survival outcome among patients with endometrial cancer, supporting the addition of pembrolizumab to chemotherapy as a first-line treatment for those with advanced or recurrent endometrial cancer, regardless of mismatch repair status.

Here, Eskander discusses the growing use of molecular biomarkers to guide cancer treatment, giving examples such as fam-trastuzumab deruxtecan-nxki (Enhertu). He also explains that the trend is expected to continue as more clinical trials are focusing on identifying biomarkers that predict response to new therapies.

Transcription:

0:09 | I think we live in an exciting time because we have identified that diseases are not homogeneous any longer. We are recognizing that there may be molecular biomarkers that can inform effective therapies. A great example of this recently is trastuzumab deruxtecan capitalizing on HER2 [immunohistochemistry (IHC)] expression. So we are going to begin to see more and more clinical trials that are trying to identify biomarkers predictive of response to novel therapeutic strategies. And we are eager to see how these are going to move into the therapeutic landscape for the management of endometrial cancer.

0:45 | And we are looking to do even additional work within the clinical trials that were conducted. RUBY, for example, did molecular characterization within their patient cohorts to try to drive future investigation and we look forward to doing the same thing in NRG-GY018.