A trial looking at cediranib and chemotherapy for advanced cervical cancer (CIRCCa)

Cancer type:

Cervical cancer

Status:

Results

Phase:

Phase 2

This trial looked at 2 chemotherapy drugs called carboplatin and paclitaxel alongside another drug called cediranib for cervical cancer. It was for women with cervical cancer that had spread or come back after treatment and couldn’t be removed with an operation. This trial was supported by Cancer Research UK.

More about this trial

Doctors often treat cervical cancer that has spread or come back with chemotherapy. Although there is no standard treatment Open a glossary item , doctors often use a combination of carboplatin and paclitaxel. But sometimes this doesn’t work very well.

In this trial, researchers thought that giving a drug called cediranib alongside carboplatin and paclitaxel could be useful for treating advanced cervical cancer.

Cediranib is a type of biological therapy Open a glossary item called an anti angiogenic drug. Anti angiogenic drugs stop the cancer growing new blood vessels. All cells need a blood supply to grow, so the researchers hope that cediranib will stop the cancer growing.

The aims of this trial were to

Find out how well cediranib alongside chemotherapy works for cervical cancer that has spread
Learn more about the side effects

Summary of results

The trial team found that having cediranib alongside carboplatin and paclitaxel was a useful treatment for cervical cancer that had spread or come back.

69 women took part in this small trial. Of those,

34 had chemotherapy and cediranib
35 had chemotherapy and a dummy drug (placebo )

The researchers looked at the average length of time people lived without any signs of their cancer getting worse. Doctors call this progression free survival. They found this was

8.1 months on the cediranib group
6.7 months in the dummy drug (placebo) group

The more severe side effects of treatment were

Diarrhoea
Tiredness (fatigue)
A drop in the number of white blood cells
High temperature (fever) due to a drop in the number of white blood cells

These side effects were worse in the group having cediranib. This group also had more problems with high blood pressure.

The trial team concluded that having cediranib alongside carboplatin and paclitaxel improved progression free survival in this group of women.

We have based this summary on information from the research team. The information they sent us has been reviewed by independent specialists (peer reviewed Open a glossary item ) and published in a medical journal. The figures we quote above were provided by the trial team who did the research. We have not analysed the data ourselves.