The Northside Hospital Cancer Institute (NHCI), Atlanta, has announced it will participate in a unique National Cancer Institute clinical collaboration to treat lung cancer based on a patient’s genetic profile, becoming the first to offer the clinical trial known as Lung-MAP.
The study is a multi-drug, multi-arm, biomarker-driven clinical trial for patients with advanced squamous cell lung cancer, enrolling approximately 10,000 patients, of which 500-1,000 will be screened for over 200 cancer-related genomic alterations per year.
Depending on the results of the screening, each patient will be assigned to a drug program that is more suitable for their tumor’s genetic profile, this way creating a type of personalized therapy.
Five investigational drugs from five different companies directed at specific mutations will be studied, including anti-PD-L1, a monoclonal antibody immunotherapy that enables the immune system to recognize and destroy tumor cells.
“We are honored to offer this clinical trial to patients in the state of Georgia and look forward to obtaining critical insights as the study progresses. This collaboration between public and private groups will provide a method of discovering new understandings and, ultimately, better care for patients in our community and across the nation,” Dr. Rodolfo Bordoni, Georgia Cancer Specialists and primary investigator for the Lung-MAP study at The Northside Hospital Cancer Institute said in a NHCI press release.
“We already have a lot of experience testing for biomarkers such as HER-2/neu to help guide treatment for breast cancer. It is exciting to now have the opportunity to apply the same model to treat lung cancer with the Lung-MAP trial,” Dr. Ronald Steis, medical oncologist with Atlanta Cancer Care and co-investigator of the Lung-MAP trial at The Northside Hospital Cancer Institute, added.
Lung-MAP members include the National Cancer Institute, SWOG Cancer Research, Friends of Cancer Research, the Foundation for the National Institutes of Health, five pharmaceutical companies (Amgen, Genentech, Pfizer, AstraZeneca, and AstraZeneca’s global biologics R&D arm, MedImmune), Foundation Medicine and several lung cancer advocacy organizations.
The trial infrastructure is capable of testing as many as 5-7 additional drugs over the next 5 years, and will cost up to $160 million.
