Conditions: Breast Cancer Triple Negative Breast Cancer Stage IV Breast Cancer Metastatic Breast Cancer
Keywords: Triple negative breast cancer (TNBC) Metastatic breast cancer Tigatuzumab (CS-1008) Abraxane (ABI-007) HER-2-neu negative ER negative, PR negative
Allocation: RANDOMIZED | Intervention model: PARALLEL
Enrollment: 64
Healthy volunteers: no

Brief summary:
Breast cancer is the most commonly diagnosed cancer and the second leading cause of cancer deaths in American women. Metastatic disease including metastatic breast cancer unfortunately remains incurable. One reason is due to the inability to develop specific therapies for specific cancer subsets.

The use of modern genomic techniques has significantly enhanced our recent understanding of breast cancer biology. Five distinct breast cancer subsets have been recognized, one of which is basal-like breast cancer. Basal-like breast cancer is typically estrogen receptor (ER) negative, progesterone receptor (PR) negative and human epidermal growth factor receptor 2 (HER-2-Neu) negative. This is referred to as triple negative breast cancer or TBNC. TBNC represents a significant proportion of breast cancer patients (10-20%) and has a poor prognosis with no targeted approach to therapy as of yet.

Tigatuzumab is a humanized monoclonal antibody targeting a death receptor on the breast cancer cells. Previous studies have shown that combining antibodies with selected chemotherapy agents have induced tumor cell death. The hypothesis of this study is to use tigatuzumab and combine it with Abraxane to serve as a targeting agent in metastatic TBNC patients.

Detailed description:
The study is an open-label randomized, multi-institutional, phase II clinical trial of Abraxane in combination with tigatuzumab or Abraxane as a single agent in patients with TNBC. Randomization (2:1) will be made from these two categories: TBNC patients with no prior chemotherapy for metastatic disease or TBNC patients with prior taxane (except Abraxane) therapy for metastatic disease. Patients randomized to Abraxane alone may be allowed to cross over to the combination of Abraxane + tigatuzumab if there is disease progression.

Arms:
arm 1: Patients will receive Abraxane at 100 mg/m2 X 3 doses on Days 1, 8, and 15 at 28-day intervals and tigatuzumab to be administered as a 10 mg/kg loading dose followed by 5 mg/kg for the first cycle and then every other week on Days 1 and 15 for subsequent cycles. Patients will be evaluated for response every 8 weeks. Patients with disease progression will be taken off the study. arm 2: Patients will receive Abraxane at 100 mg/m2 weekly X 3 doses on Days 1, 8, and 15 at 28-day intervals. Patients will have the option to crossover to the combination arm based upon the pre-clinical data.

Interventions: intervention 1: Abraxane alone intervention 2: Abraxane + Tigatuzumab
Intervention descriptions: intervention 1: 100 mg/m2 weekly X 3 doses (Days 1, 8, 15) at 28-day intervals until disease progression or unacceptable toxicity. Abraxane will be administered on an outpatient basis by an IV infusion over 30 minutes. Patients will be evaluated for response every 2 cycles (every 8 weeks). intervention 2: Tigatuzumab will be administered as a loading dose of 10 mg/kg on Day 1, then 5 mg/kg on Day 15 and then every other week on Days 1 and 15 of subsequent cycles. It will be given as an IV infusion over 60 minutes or less. No dose reductions will be allowed. Tigatuzumab will be administered in combination with the Abraxane according to the intervention described for it.

Protocol document: