A trial of adavosertib for head and neck cancer (WISTERIA)

This was a phase 1 trial . Of the 9 people who joined:

• 3 people were in Group A
• 6 people were in Group B

During the trial, 2 people from Group B stopped taking part. One person had 2 weeks of treatment with adavosertib. The other person decided to stop taking part in the trial before starting treatment with adavosertib. 

The trial team decided to close the trial early. This was because:

• very few people were joining the trial and
• how bad the side effects of adavosertib with cisplatin and radiotherapy were for people in Group B

The team used a new design in this trial. This design was to do with assessing people’s side effects more effectively to work out the best dose of adavosertib. This helped the team find out more about the benefits of using this design for:

• people with complex problems such as head and neck cancer and 
• early phase trials 

Adverse Events
Most people taking part had at least one side effect during the trial. These may have been caused by the trial treatment. But they may have been caused by something else such as other medication, the cancer itself or another medical condition.

The adverse events experienced in this trial which may, or may not be related to adavosertib were:

• a sore, inflamed mouth
• problems swallowing 
• feeling or being sick 
• diarrhoea or constipation
• tiredness 
• changes to taste 
• changes to appetite
• a high temperature with a low level of white blood cells  
• low levels of sodium, potassium, calcium, magnesium and phosphate in the blood

Conclusion
As the trial closed early the team could not come to any conclusion about adavosertib as a treatment for head and neck cancer. 

They said that the trial design they used should be considered for future trials for people with complex problems such as head and neck cancer. 

More detailed information
There is more information about this research in the reference below. 

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

Results and lessons learnt from the WISTERIA phase I trial combining AZD1775 with cisplatin pre- or post-operatively in head and neck cancer

A Kong and others
British Journal of Cancer 2024. Article number 6.

Where this information comes from    
We have based this summary on the information in the article above and from the trial team. This has been reviewed by independent specialists (peer reviewed ) and published in a medical journal. We have not analysed the data ourselves. As far as we are aware, the link we list above is active and the article is free and available to view.