The UNC Lineberger Comprehensive Cancer Center has been awarded $28 million by the Advanced Research Projects Agency for Health (ARPA-H). The money will be used to develop a new clinical trial for breast cancer which has spread to other part of the body.

The trial, “Translational Breast Cancer Research Consortium Evolutionary Clinical Trial for Novel Biomarker-Driven Therapies,” which researchers have shortened to “EVOLVE,” will adapt treatment plans in near real-time by analyzing changes in a patient’s cancer and matching it to the most promising therapy.

“This has the potential to be practice-changing,” said Bill Schaller, the Lineberger Center’s director of communications. “This trial could pave the way for a new, more dynamic approach to treatment.”

“Despite progress in treating breast cancer during the past 30 years, we still lack curative therapies for metastatic disease,” said Dr. Lisa Carey, the deputy director of clinical sciences at the Lineberger Center and the study’s lead investigator. “EVOLVE takes a different approach to clinical research by using real-time biomarker data to adapt treatment as a tumor changes.”

Up to 700 patients with metastatic breast cancer will be enrolled in the study.

Metastatic breast cancer is currently incurable. Between 15 and 20 percent of early-stage breast cancer cases will become metastatic, and only one in three people with metastatic breast cancer survive beyond five years.

“This trial will let us act earlier, modify treatment when resistance begins – not just when symptoms return,” Carey said, “and ultimately give patients more time, and better quality of life.”

EVOLVE is part of a $142 million ARPA-H program, known as the Advanced Analysis for Precision Cancer Therapy (ADAPT). The Lineberger trial is one of 10 projects which received funding through ADAPT.

 

Featured image via UNC Lineberger Cancer Center

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