For patients with advanced chordoma, better treatment options can’t come soon enough. Encouragingly, new therapies are beginning to emerge with increasing frequency, thanks to years of investment in basic research and the rapid testing capabilities of Chordoma Foundation Labs.
However, in order to quickly bring these new therapies into the clinic and know whether they truly offer an improvement, there are still big questions we need to answer, like:
How well do current drug therapies actually work for chordoma patients?
What outcomes matter most to measure in future clinical trials?
How long do patients typically benefit from existing treatments?
Filling these knowledge gaps will inform the design of future clinical trials and help them launch faster, make it less risky for companies to invest in chordoma drug developments, and lay the groundwork for eventual drug approvals for chordoma.
To this end, we’ve invested more than $250K in a portfolio of new research projects.
The first is a meta-analysis of all published drug therapy trials to establish a benchmark for how well chordoma treatments have worked in past trials. Spearheaded by our lead clinical research advisor, Greg Cote, MD, PhD, this study is aggregating data from more than 350 clinical trial participants, providing statistical power that is lacking in any single past clinical trial.
This is complemented by a suite of retrospective studies building an even larger cohort from medical centers across North America to examine the effectiveness of drug therapies in a real-world setting outside of clinical trials. These include projects at Massachusetts General Hospital, MD Anderson Cancer Center, a network of 11 medical centers collaborating through the American Association of Cancer Research’s Project GENIE, and a consortium of Canadian sarcoma specialists called CanSaRCC. To allow results of these studies to be compared and combined, all are using a common set of data collection forms that we’ve developed with input from our medical advisors.
We expect that all of these studies will yield results within the next 12-18 months, the first of which will be presented at the world’s main sarcoma conference (CTOS) this fall.
Together, these investments will set a clear bar for determining whether new drug therapies truly improve on existing ones. Building on the ongoing Natural History Study of Rare Solid Tumors at the National Cancer Institute, they will also provide a clearer picture of how patients with advanced disease fare—information that’s essential for designing future clinical trials and securing eventual drug approvals. In addition, the findings may help guide treatment decisions by patients and clinicians, inspire new trials, and reveal patterns that make it easier for researchers and companies to develop or repurpose drugs for chordoma.
We’re grateful to the participants, researchers, and supporters who are making these and other studies possible for the benefit of everyone affected by chordoma.
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