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| Associate Professor Arun Azad |
The
trial, which has already seen positive results, is being led by Monash Health
oncologist AssociateProfessor Arun Azad from the Prostate Cancer Therapeutics laboratory, School of
Clinical Sciences at Monash Health (SCS).
“The
first patient on trial has responded to therapy after just six weeks, which is
pretty remarkable,” Associate Professor Azad said.
The
investigator-initiated trial is known as ICE-PAC (Immune
checkpoint inhibition + stereotactic radiation in advanced prostate cancer),
and is supported with funding from Merck Serono, the manufacturer of Avelumab—the
drug being used in the trial.
Associate
Professor Azad said immunotherapy has transformed the management of many
malignancies—although not prostate cancer (yet)—by re-activating anti-tumour
immune responses against cancer cells.
“However,
these drugs do not work in all patients and in particular in
advanced prostate cancer, seem to have limited activity at best,” Associate
Professor Azad said.
“One
way to boost their efficacy might be pre-treating with high-dose,
precision radiotherapy (also known as stereotactic radiation) to metastatic
disease.”
“This
stereotactic radiation causes death of cancer cells, which releases
tumour antigens (proteins) that stimulate immunity and
can enhance the effect of immunotherapy drugs such as
Avelumab.”
Associate Professor Azad said the patients being recruited to
this study are heavily pre-treated having progressed on standard chemotherapy
and hormonal therapy.
“They
have limited treatment options and sadly in some cases limited prognosis. So we
badly need effective new treatment options for them,” Associate Professor Azad
said.
Collaborators on the study include Associate Professor Shankar
Siva and Dr Ben Tran from Peter MacCullum Cancer Centre and Dr Carmel Pezaro,
Eastern Health.
The researcher team will recruit a total of 25 patients. Three
patients are on the trial now with another two about to commence.
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