A trial looking at selumetinib for people with Kaposi's sarcoma (SCART)

The team weren’t able to recommend selumetinib for Kaposi’s sarcoma based on this trial. This is partly because of the small number of people who took part. 

Results
A total of 19 people joined this trial, and 16 of them went on to have treatment. This is fewer than the trial team had hoped. 

This was partly because improvements in HIV treatment means fewer patients develop AIDS related Kaposi’s sarcoma. And partly because people were concerned about side effects. So the team decided to stop the trial earlier than planned.

There were 2 phases in this trial.

Phase 1 was done to find the best dose to use. The team looked at 2 different doses of selumetinib. The first 4 people had a lower dose (50 mg). They didn’t have any serious side effects, so 3 of them had a higher dose (75 mg). And the next 6 people taking part had the higher dose. This is called dose escalation. 

The team decided the higher dose was the best dose to use. This is called the maximum tolerated dose or MTD.

Phase 2 was done to find out more about the best dose from phase 1. All 6 people in this part had the higher dose. This is called dose expansion.

Side effects
Everyone taking part had at least 1 side effect. Nearly all of them were mild or didn’t last long. The most common of these were:

• a drop in red blood cells
• an increase in proteins such as CPK, ALT, AST  or albumin
• feeling or being sick
• extreme tiredness (fatigue)

But 5 people had a more severe side effect. The most common of these was a rash.

A total of 6 people decided to stop treatment because of side effects they were having. 

The team found that selumetinib didn’t change how well anti retroviral treatment worked for HIV. The people taking part still had a level of HIV so low that it did not show up in blood tests.

How well treatment worked
The team were able to look at how well treatment worked for 15 people who took part. 

They found the sarcoma had:

• got a bit smaller in 1 person
• stayed the same in 11 people
• continued to grow in 3 people

Conclusion
It was hard for the team to draw any firm conclusions from this trial because of the small number of people who took part. The team were not able to recommend selumetinib for people with HIV related Kaposi’s sarcoma. 

They suggest other trials could be done looking at selumetinib alongside other targeted treatments for Kaposi’s sarcoma. But they recognise trials are difficult to run because Kaposi’s sarcoma is so rare.

Where this information comes from
We have based this summary on the information in the article below. We have not analysed the data ourselves.

This article has been reviewed by independent specialists (peer reviewed ) and published in a medical journal. 

Please note, the information we link to here is not in plain English. It has been written for healthcare professionals and researchers.

Find more information about what trial results mean in our information about clinical trials.

Selumetinib in Combination with Anti Retroviral Therapy in HIV-associated Kaposi sarcoma (SCART): an open-label, multicentre, phase I/II trial
Robin J. Young and others
BMC Cancer, 2025. Volume 25, Article number 505.