Eye cancer research

All potential new treatments have to be fully researched before they can be used as standard treatment for everyone. This is so that

• We can be sure they work
• We can be sure they work better than the treatments that are already available
• They are known to be safe

At first, treatments are developed and tested in laboratories. For ethical and safety reasons, experimental treatments must be tested in the laboratory before they can be tried in patients. If a treatment described here is said to be at the laboratory stage of research, it is not ready for patients and is not available either within or outside the NHS.

Tests of treatments on patients are called clinical trials. There is information about clinical trials, including the 4 phases of clinical trials in the trials and research section of CancerHelp UK. In that section you can also visit our searchable database of clinical trials. Choose 'eye cancer ' from the dropdown menu box and click 'search'. If there is a trial you are interested in, print it off and take it to your own specialist. If the trial is suitable for you, your doctor will need to refer you to the research team. The database also has information about closed trials and trial results.

Everything covered on this page is the subject of ongoing research. Until studies are completed and new effective treatments are found, these experimental treatments cannot be used as standard therapy for eye cancers.

Researchers are looking for genes that increase the risk of cancer. Researchers in a small study want to find out more about the genes for a type of eye cancer called uveal melanoma. The uvea is the middle tissue layer of the eyeball. This study called PROGENOM, is gathering information from blood and tissue samples, which may help to predict outlook (prognosis) and treatment outcome more accurately, and help to improve it.

The researchers want to identify which genes and proteins behave abnormally in this disease. They will study blood and tissue samples of people having surgery to remove diagnosed uveal melanoma. They hope that what they find will help them to find features of uveal melanoma that would help them tell whether the cancer was likely to spread and predict how well treatment will work.

Some chemotherapy drugs such as gemcitabine, treosulfan and cisplatin work for some people with uveal melanoma.  Researchers have been looking at using these drugs together to treat advanced eye melanoma. These were early, small studies. Until larger studies are done we won’t know if chemotherapy is any better than the existing treatments for people with advanced eye melanoma.

There is also a chemotherapy trial for people with uveal melanoma that has spread to the liver, and cannot be removed surgically. Doctors want to find out the best way of giving the chemotherapy drug fotemustine. People on this trial either have fotemustine into a vein (intravenously), or directly into an artery going to the liver. There is information about this trial on our clinical trial database. Choose ‘eye cancer’ from the dropdown list of cancer types.

Researchers have looked at injecting the chemotherapy drug methotrexate directly into the eyeball to treat lymphoma of the eye. As with radiotherapy for this type of eye cancer, methotrexate treatment has been successful in getting rid of the tumour from the eye itself (locally). But there is a chance the cancer could still come back in the spinal fluid, brain or the eye.

Biological therapies are treatments that act on processes in cancer cells. They can work in different ways such as changing the way cells signal to each other or by stimulating the body to attack or control the growth of cancer cells.

Imatinib (Glivec) is a type of biological therapy. It works by blocking growth factor receptors on cancer cells. So the cells can’t receive signals telling them to grow and divide. The ITEM trial is a small trial looking at how well imatinib works for advanced uveal melanoma.

The SUAVE trial is looking at how well a biological therapy called sunitinib (Sutent) may work for advanced uveal melanoma.

The NITRO trial is looking at another type of biological therapy called ranibizumab for uveal melanoma. Ranibizumab is a monoclonal antibody. It works by targeting a protein on the cancer cell called vascular endothelial growth factor (VEGF). The aims of the trial are to see how well ranibizumab works for uveal melanoma and what the side effects are.

You can find out more about biological therapy trials for uveal melanoma on our clinical trials database. Type uveal melanoma into the search box. If you want to see all the trials, tick the boxes for closed trials and trial results.