ASCO Data Confirm Standard-of-Care Treatments for Cervical, Ovarian Cancer

This transcript has been edited for clarity.

I'm Dr Maurie Markman from Cancer Treatment Centers of America. I want to briefly discuss two abstracts on gynecologic cancer that were presented at the recent 2021 American Society of Clinical Oncology (ASCO) meeting. As always, many interesting abstracts on new drugs, new combinations, and new strategies were presented at ASCO. But this year was unique, in my opinion, because two incredibly important phase 3 randomized trials did not set a new standard for the management of three different conditions, but rather clearly established the existing standard.

The OUTBACK study looked at the question of the use of adjuvant chemotherapy following chemoradiation therapy in the management of locally advanced cervix cancer. Chemoradiation therapy has now been used for several decades, is well established, and improves survival in women with cervical cancer. But we have not known whether additional chemotherapy following chemoradiation would improve outcomes. This study clearly demonstrated that it does not.

This was an international study; 919 patients were randomly assigned to receive chemoradiation followed by no chemotherapy vs chemoradiation plus four cycles of carboplatin/paclitaxel. The addition of the four cycles of carboplatin/paclitaxel did not improve progression-free survival (PFS) or overall survival.