Phase III Trial of Durvalumab for Mesothelioma Underway

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration will be closely watching the latest, international phase III clinical trial for unresectable pleural mesothelioma involving the immunotherapy drug durvalumab. FDA approval may be coming soon. “It looks very promising,” Dr. Arkadiusz Dudek, of Regions Hospital Cancer Care Center in St. Paul, Minnesota, told The Mesothelioma Center at Asbestos.com. “The hope is to have the regimen approved by the FDA as front-line therapy. There is a real need today for more options with mesothelioma.” The goal of the randomized trial – officially known as DREAM3R – is to determine how much overall survival improves by combining durvalumab with standard chemotherapy of pemetrexed and cisplatin. Dudek is a principal investigator for the Metro-Minnesota Community Oncology Research Consortium, one of the first four U.S. locations that began accepting patients in March. The other centers are Johns Hopkins Sidney Kimmel Cancer Center in Baltimore, the Cleveland Clinic in Ohio and the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor. Several more are expected to join soon. The start of the trial was delayed at several sites because of the COVID-19 pandemic. Patients throughout New Zealand and Australia are also being recruited. “There is potential of this becoming part of a new standard of care for mesothelioma,” Dudek said. “It is exciting to have this study going on. This is where treatment improvements are made.” Durvalumab Could...
Source: Asbestos and Mesothelioma News - Category: Environmental Health Authors: Source Type: news