Roundup: Clinical development of drug-radiotherapy combinations workshop

The Combinations Alliance partners with the ECMC Network to drive new combination therapies, including drug-radiotherapy combinations. ECMC studies such as PIONEER and PARADIGM-2 have been previously highlighted as successes in this area.

Representatives from the ECMC network have been part of a cross-disciplinary joint working group led by NCRI CTRad and made up of academia, industry, patient representatives and regulatory bodies. Last week, Cancer Research UK supported a two day meeting organised by AACR, FDA, and ASTRO to build on the work done by the joint working group in their landmark paper published in 2016 to boost the number of novel drugs being successfully registered in combination with radiotherapy.  Since radiotherapy is one of the principal curative treatment options for patients with cancer, this is a very important initiative to improve treatment further.

Professor Ricky Sharma, from University College London and lead for the working group, sees great potential in drug-radiotherapy combination treatments.

“Although we made significant progress in combining traditional anticancer drugs with radiotherapy, we haven’t made much progress in combining newer targeted agents and immunotherapies with radiotherapy. In order to improve cure rates, we need to rethink the way we combine drugs with radiotherapy. This two day meeting in Bethesda, USA, has brought together academics, the pharma industry, patient representatives and regulatory bodies to discuss how we can move this field forward and accelerate the pace at which we register new drug-radiotherapy combinations to treat patients with cancer.  It is particularly important for the emerging field of immuno-radio-oncology where we are using radiotherapy to stimulate a response to the immunotherapy drug.”

“It was great for CRUK, CTRad and the Combinations Alliance to see what a difference the seminal paper our Working Group published in 2016 has made to pharma and regulators considering new drug-radiotherapy combinations.  This meeting represents a massive step to bring all interested investigators together towards developing appropriate regulatory guidelines for drug-radiotherapy combination studies.”

Co-chairs Ester Hammond and Ted Lawrence.