Marcia Cruz-Correa, MD, PhD

Marcia Cruz-Correa, MD, PhD, Professor of Medicine at the University of Puerto Rico and Adjunct Professor of Surgical Oncology at The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center, congratulated the investigators on the conduct of the PANGEA trial and the outcomes it achieved for patients. “When we look at your pathways and how you followed the patients prospectively, it’s striking,” she commented. “You show a 1-year survival rate of 66% and a median survival of 16.4 months in stage IV patients.”

Dr. Cruz-Correa was interested in patients’ response to each line of treatment; Dr. Catenacci indicated these data will be reported at the 2020 ASCO Annual Meeting. “We need to look at patients who received a third line of personalized treatment vs other studies in the third-line setting,” Dr. Cruz-Correa said. “That would put your findings into a context that we can believe.”

Dr. Cruz-Correa emphasized the benefit of identifying the molecular makeup of tumors at every stage of disease. “It’s great to be able to incorporate testing of the tumor at diagnosis and again at disease progression. Not many people are doing this…. These data are important, and if you can also target that biology with a therapy, even better,” she said. “Data like yours could help change the standard of care.”

DISCLOSURE: Dr. Cruz-Correa has served on an advisory board for BeiGene Pharmaceutical and Exact Sciences and owns stock in the Pan American Center for Oncology Trials.