Precision Medicine Forges Ahead with New Data from the NCI-MATCH Trial

June 19, 2018

Precision Medicine Forges Ahead with New Data from the NCI-MATCH Trial

According to the Precision Medicine Initiative, precision medicine is “an emerging approach for disease treatment and prevention that takes into account individual variability in genes, environment, and lifestyle for each person.” Precision medicine is advancing in cancer research –in part due to the National Cancer Institute-Molecular Analysis for Therapy Choice trial, which recently reported new data. This new information is sure to strengthen the path of targeted therapies.

Since August 2015, the National Cancer Institute-Molecular Analysis for Therapy Choice trial (NCI-MATCH) has been underway. The trial has been described as precision medicine in action. Why? The trial is based on treating patients using targeted therapies on gene mutations, or biomarkers, rather than treating the specific cancer type (for example, breast, rectal, liver, etc). Researchers use next generation sequencing (NGS) technology to identify whether or not a patient has certain genes associated with cancer. Specifically, the study looks at 143 different mutations.

NCI-MATCH is for adults who have solid tumors, lymphoma, or myeloma that have progressed on standard treatment or rare cancers for which there is no standard treatment. In fact, many of the patients enrolled have been treated with more than three lines of therapy before entering the trial. The purpose of the trial is to determine if matching certain drugs or drug combinations in patients with a specific gene mutation will treat their cancer regardless of cancer type. The treatments that show promise on the MATCH trial can move on to larger trials–ones that more definitively show that they work. To learn more about NCI-MATCH watch the Fight CRC webinar presented by Dr. O’Dwyer from October 2016.

Since the initiation of the study, a few arms have had their results released, and the results have been exciting.

Data from Arm Z1D was released in November 2017. Results showed that the drug nivolumab has promising activity in mismatch repair–deficient non-colorectal cancers.

More recent arms had data released at ASCO 2018. The following show some exciting news for mCRC patients:

In Arm I, 65 patients who had mutations in the PIK3CA gene were treated with the experimental cancer drug taselisib. And while the tumors did not shrink substantially, over 20% of the patients had prolonged stable disease (progression free survival) of more than six months. PI3 kinase (PIK3CA) are genes needed for multiple cell functions including cell growth (proliferation) and survival. Testing for this mutation in colorectal cancer patients is not standard practice, per guidelines as of October 2017, however these findings indicate further research is needed.

In Arm W, patients with HER2-overexpressing tumors were treated with ado-trastuzumab emtansine (T-DM1). Partial responses were seen in three of the patients (all of whom had a rare cancer type). Also, over 45% of the patients on this arm had stable disease, including those patients with colorectal cancers.

Updates from NCI-MATCH trial are extremely exciting because they have the ability to propel precision medicine research forward. We will continue to stay up to date on the data and keep you posted on the latest results from the NCI-MATCH trial!

Learn more about biomarkers!