Slomovitz on Tisotumab Vedotin's Promise for Cervical Cancer

On April 29, 2024, the FDA granted full approval to tisotumab vedotin (Tivdak) for patients with recurrent or metastatic cervical cancer whose disease has progressed on or after first-line therapy.

Tisotumab vedotin is an antibody-drug conjugate that showed promise in the phase 3 innovaTV 301 study (NCT04697628). Brian Slomovitz, director of the Division of Gynecologic Oncology at Mount Sinai Medical Center in Miami Beach, Florida, and primary investigator of the study, highlights its potential for improved survival rates and paves the way for exploring combinations with other therapies. While a cure isn't guaranteed for all patients, the drug represents a significant step forward. The hope is that, like with other cancers, tisotumab vedotin could offer a chance for cure for some patients with cervical cancer in the future.

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0:05 | The next step will probably be to move it into earlier lines of therapy. We always need better treatment options for current disease. But just like anything, we usually see if it works in their current setting. And then we can move forward. So we're looking at exciting combinations of this drug with bevacizumab [Avastin], with pembrolizumab [Keytruda], with chemotherapy, and there are a lot of settings.

0:25 | The key to using this drug is it goes after something called tissue factor, which is expressed on cells, I was involved in the first human trial and studies where we found the tissue factor is expressed in cervical cancer cells. That's why we started down this pathway. When talking about the implications here, you know, in oncology care, obviously, we want to find the best treatment that treats all patients. But without doing that, we want to make positive steps. And this is a tremendously really a step in the right direction to find a new cure. That increased overall survival is getting us to where we want to be. It's not that one study; it'll be a series of several studies, but get us there. But to start off with a significant advantage, I think is is the right way to go.

1:08 | And ultimately, in all cancer care, the word cure is something that we don't hear. But if we can get away to cure some of our patients, and not necessarily, we haven't seen that yet now with with tisotumab vedotin, but if we move forward, we may have that opportunity. But we're seeing that with immunotherapy and endometrial cancers, we're seeing the word cure. We saw that with PARP conditions and BRCA-mutated ovarian cancers, a percentage of patients are cured. If we could get to a point that recurrent or metastatic cervical cancer, if we can get a portion of those patients cured, it'd be unprecedented.