A trial of KW-2478 and bortezomib for myeloma that has come back

Cancer type:

Blood cancers

Myeloma

Status:

Results

Phase:

Phase 2

This trial looked at a combination of KW-2478 and bortezomib for myeloma that has come back or got worse despite having other treatment.

More about this trial

Doctors can treat myeloma with chemotherapy, a stem cell transplant and targeted cancer drugs. But it may come back or stop responding to treatment, and researchers are looking for new ways to help people in this situation.

In this trial, they looked at the combination of bortezomib and KW-2478.

Bortezomib is a type of cancer growth blocker called a proteasome inhibitor. It was already being used to treat myeloma when this trial was done.

KW-2478 is another type of cancer growth blocker called a heat shock protein 90 (HSP90) inhibitor. Heat shock protein is involved in cell growth. Doctors hoped that KW-2478 would stop this protein working and so the myeloma cells would die.

The aims of this trial were to:

see if the combination of bortezomib and KW-2478 was useful for myeloma that has come back after other treatment
learn more about the side effects

Summary of results

This trial showed that the combination of bortezomib and KW-2478 was safe to use and could be a useful treatment for myeloma.

Results

This trial recruited 79 people with myeloma which had either come back after treatment, or treatment hadn’t worked. Everyone taking part had both bortezomib and KW-2478.

The research team looked at how well the treatment worked. They found that the myeloma either went away or got better in 31 out of 79 people (39%). This is called the response rate. Other trials had shown that the response rate of bortezomib alone was about 35%.

They also looked at how long it was before the myeloma started to grow again. It was about 6.7 months. Other trials had shown similar results for people who had bortezomib alone.

Side effects

74 of the people taking part had at least one side effect. Some of them were mild or didn’t last long, but 34 people had side effects that were more severe.

The most common of these more severe side effects were:

diarrhoea
tiredness (fatigue)
a drop in white blood cells
feeling sick
a drop in blood clotting cells (platelets)

Conclusion

The research team concluded that the combination of bortezomib and KW-2478 was safe to use. And that it worked for some people whose myeloma had come back or not responded to other treatment. They suggest that KW-2478 is looked at in other trials, perhaps with different dosing or in combination with other treatments.

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.