A trial looking at pertuzumab and docetaxel for advanced cancer (BO17021)

Cancer type:

All cancer types

Status:

Results

Phase:

Phase 1

This trial looked at pertuzumab (also called Omnitarg) and docetaxel for advanced cancer.

Pertuzumab is a monoclonal antibody. Monoclonal antibodies are a type of biological therapy. They look for specific proteins on the surface of cells. Pertuzumab looks for a protein called HER2, which is made by some cancers.

Docetaxel (Taxotere) is a chemotherapy drug that was already licensed in the UK to treat cancers such as breast, prostate, stomach, bladder and ovarian cancer.

Doctors hoped that the combination of pertuzumab and docetaxel would be useful for treating advanced solid tumours. A solid tumour is any cancer except lymphoma or leukaemia.

The aims of the trial were to find out

How well the combination of pertuzumab and docetaxel worked
The best dose of docetaxel to have with pertuzumab
What the side effects were

Summary of results

The researchers found the best doses to safely give docetaxel and pertuzumab together. They found that this combination of drugs helped some people with advanced cancer.

The trial recruited 19 people. The first 3 people had a low dose of docetaxel and a single dose of pertuzumab. As none of these people had bad side effects, the next group of patients had a higher dose of docetaxel. By slowly increasing the dose for each group of people, the researchers found the best dose of docetaxel to give with pertuzumab. Then they changed the dose of pertuzumab to find the best dose of that drug to have at the same time as docetaxel without causing too many side effects.

The side effects that some people did have with the combination of these drugs included

A drop in the number of white blood cells
Diarrhoea
Tiredness (fatigue)
Sore mouth

The trial team also found that

In 14 people, the cancer stopped growing after 2 cycles of treatment – researchers call this stable disease
9 people still had stable disease after 4 cycles of treatment
In 1 person the cancer got smaller after 4 cycles of treatment – researchers call this a partial response

As this trial found the doses at which it is safe to have the 2 drugs together, the researchers suggested there should be more trials to see how well this treatment works for different cancers.

We have based this summary on information from the team who ran the trial. 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. We have not analysed the data ourselves.