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Promising Cancer Treatments Under Development

Date:
November 1, 2007
Source:
Journal of the National Cancer Institute
Summary:
A novel trial design offers a way to select which promising drug combinations should be pursued in more advanced clinical trials. Because it is impossible to conduct randomized comparisons of all possible therapies, a new selection method was needed to identify the most promising ones.
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A novel trial design offers a way to select which promising drug combinations should be pursued in more advanced clinical trials. Because it is impossible to conduct randomized comparisons of all possible therapies, a new selection method was needed to identify the most promising ones.

Randall Millikan, Ph.D., M.D., of the University of Texas M. D. Anderson Cancer Center in Houston and colleagues conducted a randomized trial to identify promising treatments for androgen-independent prostate cancer. Patients were randomly assigned to one of four different chemotherapy regimens and were evaluated every 8 weeks. Patients who did not respond to their treatment were randomly assigned to one of the other three treatments. The pattern continued until the patient responded to one of the regimens or until the patient failed to respond to two different regimens.

Thirty-five patients responded to their initial treatment and nine more patients to their second treatment. Their median survival was 30 months, compared with 19 months for the patients who did not respond. Weekly treatment with a combination of paclitaxel, estramustine, and carboplatin was the most successful of the four regimens.

"In our view, the results of this trial provide an objective basis for phase III evaluation of [paclitaxel, estramustine, and carboplatin] versus the current standard of single-agent docetaxel," the authors write.

In a commentary, graduate student Oliver Bembom and Mark van der Laan, Ph.D., of the University of California at Berkeley review recent advances in statistical methods for estimating the success rates of different adaptive treatment strategies, such as those employed by Millikan and colleagues.

"By emphasizing the intuitive appeal and straightforward implementation of these methods and by illustrating the striking findings to which these methods can lead, we hope to convincethe reader that such trials provide a rich source of information that is made readily accessible though current analytical approaches,” they write.


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Materials provided by Journal of the National Cancer Institute. Note: Content may be edited for style and length.


Cite This Page:

Journal of the National Cancer Institute. "Promising Cancer Treatments Under Development." ScienceDaily. ScienceDaily, 1 November 2007. <www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2007/10/071030165946.htm>.
Journal of the National Cancer Institute. (2007, November 1). Promising Cancer Treatments Under Development. ScienceDaily. Retrieved March 28, 2024 from www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2007/10/071030165946.htm
Journal of the National Cancer Institute. "Promising Cancer Treatments Under Development." ScienceDaily. www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2007/10/071030165946.htm (accessed March 28, 2024).

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