Despite negative results from the phase III IMagyn050 trial presented at the 2020 European Society for Medical Oncology (ESMO) virtual congress, the death knell might not have sounded for PD-1/L1 in ovarian cancer, said ESMO-invited discussant Isabelle Ray-Coquard, MD, PhD, of Claude Bernard University in Lyon, France.
In this exclusive MedPage Today video, Ray-Coquard explains why these therapies may still have a role for some patients.
Following is a transcript of her remarks:
IMagyn050 is a very important trial for our community because we would like to see immune therapy in the management of ovarian cancer.
You have to remember that ovarian cancer is really a killer for women, and the majority of patients with advanced disease will relapse. And at the time of the relapse, unfortunately we don’t have any possibility to cure the patient. And so, seeing some innovative treatment in first line is very important to me.
However, this international randomized phase III trial did not meet its primary end point. And we are really disappointed for the patient. We fortunately see some interesting results in some subgroups, specifically for the PD-L1 highly positive population and also in some heart disease. So, I would be sure that in the near future, we have perhaps a new biomarker and we will be able to report a positive trial.
We need to explore the subgroup where we have seen some effects. And we have to understand if this in fact is due to the immune treatment in combination with chemo, or there is some bevacizumab effect — the bevacizumab also included in this trial.
And so perhaps the combination of bevacizumab and atezolizumab explains the benefit in this group. And we need to also develop a trial to demonstrate the positive results of the IMagyn050 trial subgroup analyses.
Source: MedicalNewsToday.com
