| The following article features coverage from the Society of Gynecologic Oncology’s 50th Annual Meeting on Women’s Cancer. Click here to read more of Cancer Therapy Advisor‘s conference coverage. |
A long-term survival analysis of patients with platinum-sensitive, relapsed epithelial ovarian carcinoma treated with dendritic cell vaccination immunotherapy in combination with chemotherapy showed a significant improvement in overall survival (OS; P =.0032) compared with chemotherapy alone. The improvement was not seen, however, in progression-free survival (PFS; P =.35). The findings from this open-label, multicenter, phase 2 study (ClinicalTrials.gov Identifier: NCT02107950) were presented at the Society of Gynecologic Oncology (SGO)’s 50th Annual Meeting on Women’s Cancer.
Dendritic cells, which are involved in both the innate and adaptive immune responses, are potent antigen-presenting cells that can generate robust immune responses. Vaccination with dendritic cells that have taken up specific tumor antigens, in this case ovarian cancer antigens, is a form of immunotherapy.
Researchers enrolled patients with platinum-sensitive, relapsed ovarian cancer whose disease relapsed after complete response to first-line platinum-based chemotherapy lasting longer than 6 months. Patients were randomly assigned to receive either dendritic cell-based immunotherapy plus carboplatin/gemcitabine (arm A) or carboplatin/gemcitabine alone (arm B). Chemotherapy was administered for 6 to 10 cycles and patients in the dendritic cell vaccination arm started immunotherapy in cycle 2 and subsequently receiving 5 induction doses every 3 weeks followed by 5 maintenance doses every 6 weeks. The primary endpoint of the study was PFS.
Continue Reading
Thirty-two patients in each arm were available for analysis in the intention-to-treat population. At a median follow-up of 36.6 months, no significant difference in median PFS was observed for the 2 arms (11.3 months with immunotherapy vs 10.1 months without immunotherapy; hazard ratio, 0.77; 95% CI, 0.44-1.35, P =.35). However, median OS was 35.5 months and 22.1 months in the arms receiving immunotherapy compared with those who did not (hazard ratio, 0.38; 95% CI, 0.20–0.74, P =.0032), with corresponding 2-year survival rates of 72.4% and 40.9%.
The authors suggested that these results are consistent with a delayed immunotherapeutic effect for patients in the dendritic cell vaccination therapy arm.
Read more of Cancer Therapy Advisor‘s coverage of SGO’s annual meeting by visiting the conference page.
Reference
- Cibula D, Rob L, Mallmann P, et al. Dendritic cell-based immunotherapy (DCVAC/OvCa) with chemotherapy in patients with platinum-sensitive, relapsed, epithelial ovarian carcinoma: survival analysis of a phase II, open-label, randomized, multicenter trial (study SOV02). Presented at: The Society of Gynecologic Oncology (SGO)’s 50th Annual Meeting on Women’s Cancer; Honolulu, Hawaii; March 16-19, 2019. Abstract 35.
