‘Fantastic’ success of ovarian cancer treatment in trial offers a ray of hope

A pathbreaking development in the world of cancer treatment could better the lives of thousands of women with ovarian cancer.

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Medical trials of a novel drug combination show that the drugs can together shrink tumours in half of the patients with an advanced form of the disease. When used together, the pair of drugs work by blocking the signals that cancer cells need to grow.

Presented at the European Society for Medical Oncology congress, experts have hailed the results to be ‘fantastic’, reports The Guardian.

The development could offer a new treatment method for women with a type of ovarian cancer that is unresponsive to chemotherapy or hormone therapy. Called VS-6766 and defactinib, the drug combination was tested in patients with low-grade serous ovarian cancer.

Of the 25 patients assessed in the trial, 46% saw their tumours shrink significantly in response to the treatment. Patients with a particular mutation who had KRAS-driven tumours witnessed even better outcomes with 64% seeing tumour shrinkage.

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The second phase of trials is already underway and the team led by the Institute of Cancer Research (ICR) in London and the Royal Marsden NHS Foundation Trust believes that if the results are repeated in larger trials, it could prove to be a significant advance in low-grade serous ovarian cancer treatment.