New treatment offers hope for endometrial cancer patients

A new treatment for endometrial cancer demonstrated strong potential in a Phase 3 clinical trial.Drugmaker Merck announced Monday that the investigational drug sacituzumab tirumotecan (sac-TMT) met its “primary endpoints” of overall survival and progression-free survival in patients with advanced or recurrent endometrial cancer.The TroFuse-005 trial is the first global Phase 3 trial to “demonstrate statistically significant improvement” in survival compared to chemotherapy in these patients, according to a Merck press release.This was also the first and only antibody-drug conjugate (ADC) to achieve such a result for endometrial cancer patients in this setting, the researchers stated.An ADC is a targeted cancer therapy that delivers more of the drug to tumor cells while limiting damage to healthy cells.The trial involved 776 patients with endometrial cancer whose disease worsened after receiving both platinum chemotherapy and immunotherapy.The patients were randomly assigned sac-TMT, administered every two weeks, or a treatment of the physician’s choice, including doxorubicin or paclitaxel chemotherapy.The patients were aware of which treatment they were receiving.Those receiving sac-TMT showed “clinically meaningful improvement” in their disease state compared to the treatment of the physician’s choice, the researchers found.The study also met response rate benchmarks and exhibited similar side effects to earlier studies of the same drug, Merck reported.The drugmaker did not disclose any statistics on exact survival benefit, response rate, side effect rates or other details, but the researchers aim to present this Phase 3 data at an upcoming medical meeting.Dr.

Domenica Lorusso, the study’s global lead investigator and professor of obstetrics and gynecology at Humanitas University and Humanitas San Pio X in Milan, wrote in a press release that these results show sac-TMT “may be able to address a critical unmet need for certain patients with...