Update from Principal Investigator – Dr Mustafa Khasraw
Neuroendocrine carcinomas (NEC) are rare cancers posing unique challenges to treatment and disease control. They commonly arise in the gastrointestinal tract (stomach, pancreas, small and large bowel).
Most patients with this disease have very poor outcome. Unfortunately, there are no prospective, randomised studies for NECs of the gastrointestinal tract.
In order to achieve a better understanding of this disease and achieve better outcomes, the NABNEC project team, drafted a study protocol and obtained regulatory documentation and Human Research and Ethics Committee approvals to conduct the pilot NABNEC study; A feasibility study of Nab-paclitaxel in combination with carboplatin as first line treatment of gastrointestinal Neuroendocrine carcinomas.
The contributions of the Unicorn Foundation and Rob MacGregor research fund supported the pilot study including establishing protocol, patient consent forms, data system and ethics approval for study that was granted in September 2014.
The study recruited its first patient in July 2015 and a total of 6 trial sites in Victoria, NSW, South Australia and Tasmania have successfully been opened and are actively identifying and screening patients.
Supported by the successful clinical implementation of the pilot study, a large grant was secured from the National Health Medical Research Council (NHMRC) to expand the project to a two-arm randomised control trial. Pleasingly, ethics approval of this project expansion was approved in April 2016 and the randomised study will open at 20 study sites across Australia and New Zealand.
None of this would have been possible without the help of the Rob MacGregor research grant.
