First patient in EViDENCE BM trial to test personalised treatment for brain metastases
BRUSSELS – Anticancer Fund is proud to announce that, thanks to its funding, the University Hospital and University of Zurich have included the first participant in the EViDENCE BM trial, a randomised clinical study for 102 patients whose cancer has spread to the brain and who are candidate for brain surgery.
Urgent need for new treatments
Treating patients whose cancer has spread to the brain is extremely hard. Most patients with brain metastases have a life expectancy of less than a year, regardless of where the initial tumour originated (e.g. breast, lung …).
Standard treatments may include a combination of brain surgery, radiation or, whenever available, medications targeting the initial tumour. Unfortunately, these drugs aren’t always able to penetrate the brain’s protective barriers, or don’t work effectively due to differences between the initial tumour and the brain metastases.
Currently, predictions about which drugs might work are based on analysing small parts of the original tumour. However, with brain metastases, it is important to analyse the metastatic cells as well, since these cells may have other characteristics that affect the response to treatments.
Advanced personalised cancer care
One promising novel approach is known as pharmacoscopy. This advanced technology, developed by the Snijder Lab at ETH Zurich, tests more than 100 drugs on small samples of the brain metastases from each patient. By observing how these cancer cells react to each drug doctors may predict which drugs might work best for each individual patient. To evaluate the effectiveness of this technology and validate the personalised strategy in patients, the EViDENCE BM trial was designed.
“Treating patients with brain metastases remains one of the greatest challenges in oncology, marked by significant unmet needs and clinical complexity. The heterogeneity of primary tumours, variability in disease progression, and limited efficacy of standard treatments underscore the urgent need for more personalised and multidisciplinary strategies. Tailoring care based on molecular profiling, tumour biology, and patient-specific factors offers the best hope for improving outcomes and, ultimately, quality of life in this vulnerable patient population” says Dr. Evandro De Azambuja, medical oncologist at Jules Bordet Institute (Brussels), and a Belgian Key Opinion Leader in breast cancer.
A new randomised clinical trial
EViDENCE BM is a randomised study in which 102 patients will be divided into two groups. One group (80 patients) will receive treatment guided by pharmacoscopy, while the other group (22 patients) will follow standard treatment as determined by their oncologist during the tumour board.
The trial’s goal is to assess whether a personalised pharmacoscopy-guided approach works better compared to the standard treatment for patients with brain metastases that need surgery.
“Pharmacoscopy represents an entirely novel approach to detect specific vulnerabilities of cancer cells directly after surgery and may lead to novel treatments that could not have been imagined based on any prior information on the patients and their tumours”, explained Emilie Le Rhun, the coordinating investigator of the EVIDENCE BM trial.
The trial takes place in Switzerland and is led by a prominent Neuro-oncology team (University Hospital and University of Zurich) in collaboration with a renowned scientific innovation hub (ETH Zürich). The patients will be recruited from 3 centres in Switzerland: Basel, St. Gallen-HOCH, and University Hospital Zurich.
Anticancer Fund commits to innovative research
This pioneering trial is expected to improve our understanding of an innovative and personalised therapeutic approach for patients with brain metastasis who currently have limited treatment options and as a result, less favourable outcomes.