August 1, 2024
The CUPISCO Trial was a Peter-Mac led international clinical trial, involving 636 CUP patients who were treated at specialist hospitals across 34 countries.
Currently CUP is commonly treated with broad-acting chemotherapy as the optimal treatment path is often unknown. All patients enrolled to the CUPISCO trial received this initial chemotherapy to control the growth of their tumours.
Of this group with controlled cancers, 75% received a more targeted treatment with immunotherapy or other molecularly-guided therapy based on comprehensive genomic profiling of the patient's tumour and their blood (liquid biopsy). The other 25% were assigned to a control group who received further chemotherapy.
The patients treated with the molecularly-guided therapy were found to have an extended period of time before their cancer worsened in comparison to the group of patients continuing the standard chemotherapy. This treatment also saw a greater shrinkage in tumours.
Professor Linda Mileshkin, was the co-lead for the study alongside colleague Professor Alwin Kramer from Germany.
Professor Mileshkin believes the study confirmed the benefits of molecularly-guided therapy in compared to using standard chemotherapy:
“The clear benefit from molecularly-guided therapy in the investigational arm means that this should be a new standard of care for CUP patients,”
“We need to find a way to make both the comprehensive genomic profiling as well as the relevant targeted therapies available for CUP patients to access.”
The CUPISCO results have just published in The Lancet. The paper is titled "Molecularly guided therapy versus chemotherapy after disease control in unfavourable cancer of unknown primary (CUPISCO)", and you can read it in full here.
Credit: Danny Rose, Media and Content Manager, Peter MacCallum Cancer Centre
