FORECAST-1: Feasibility of organoid response assessment to define effective treatments for patients with colorectal cancer after failure of standard therapy.

Abstract

e15571 Background: Many patients with metastatic colorectal cancer (mCRC) that have failed standard first- and second-line therapies remain fit and eager for further treatment. Therapeutic options include two agents with proven but modest survival benefit, a clinical trial of an investigational agent, rechallenge with agents successfully used in earlier lines of treatment, or agents that have shown some activity in non-randomised phase II studies. Patient derived tumouroid (PDT) are self-organizing three-dimensional in\xa0vitro models cultured from a fresh tumour biopsy. They potentially represent a robust personalized model for real-time drug sensitivity testing to determine optimal anti-cancer therapies for individual patients. Methods: FORECAST-1 is an observational, non-randomized study to determine the feasibility of PDT based drug sensitivity screening for patients with mCRC that have failed at least two lines of therapy. Once established, PDTs undergo drug sensitivity screening including agents regorafenib, trifluridine/tipiracil (TAS102), oxaliplatin, irinotecan, 5-fluorouracil (5FU), erlotinib (a surrogate EGFR-inhibitor), gemcitabine, pemetrexed and temozolomide. Patients are treated at clinician discretion, with clinical response to be correlated with PDT response. Results: Since September 2020 we have enrolled 18 of a planned 30 patients, median age 55 years (range 44 – 81). 17 patients were ECOG 0-1. Four patients had received prior TAS102 treatment. Biopsies were obtained from liver (n = 6), soft tissue/peritoneal metastases (5), lung (2), lymph node (2), primary (1), brain (1) and bone (1). Drug sensitivity testing has been performed on seven PDTs at a median of 62 days from biopsy (range 42 – 128), one PDT culture has failed. A standardised reporting template has been developed. Treatments received by patients to date include TAS102 (n = 5), regorafenib (2), FOLFOX (3), FOLFIRI (1) FOLFIRI plus EGFR-inhibitor (1), capecitabine plus bevacizumab (1) and an immunotherapy-based clinical trial (1). Four patients did not receive further anti-cancer therapy post enrolment, and one patient is yet to commence further systemic therapy. Conclusions: Enrolment to this feasibility study has been rapid demonstrating this to be an area of clinical need. PDTs have been successfully established from a high proportion of patients, but with variable growth rates. Methods to accelerate PDT culture and drug testing are being pursued to increase the feasibility of a planned prospective study of PDT sensitivity informing patient management. Clinical trial information: ACTRN12620001353987.