Results of FALCON trial on breast cancer treatment published in Lancet

Results of the FALCON trial (an international, multicentre, RCT) have just been published in full in the leading journal Lancet. 

FALCON is a Phase 3 clinical trial in patients with advanced breast cancer which was carried out at over 150 centres worldwide of which Royal Derby Hospital was one.  It compared fulvestrant 500mg versus the current standard (an aromatase inhibitor) and has shown that fulvestrant 500mg is a more efficacious endocrine therapy – indeed it is the most efficacious. The study results were presented as the lead oral presentation in the breast cancer session of the recent European Society of Medical Oncology (ESMO) meeting in October 2016 and the study was published in the Lancet which has an Impact Factor score of 44. 

Royal Derby Hospital has therefore made a significant contribution to FALCON through the works of both Professor John Robertson, Chief Investigator, and Kwok-Leung Cheung, Principal Investigator at Derby. Both researchers are from the Derby-based Division of Medical Sciences and Graduate Entry Medicine at The University of Nottingham School of Medicine.

Derby was the highest recruiting centre in the UK and one of the highest worldwide. Fulvestrant 500mg is already prescribed by the trust after patients’ tumours have progressed on other endocrine agents. The FALCON trial will move prescribing of fulvestrant to earlier in the treatment sequence for patients and as such will change the standard of care for what should be the first line of endocrine therapy. The FALCON trial extends the University's longstanding programme of research in breast cancer on endocrine therapies in general and fulvestrant in particular.

More about the study.

Reference:

Fulvestrant 500 mg versus anastrozole 1 mg for hormone receptor-positive advanced breast cancer (FALCON): an international, randomised, double-blind, phase 3 trial.

Robertson JF, Bondarenko IM, Trishkina E, Dvorkin M, Panasci L, Manikhas A, Shparyk Y, Cardona-Huerta S, Cheung KL, Philco-Salas MJ, Ruiz-Borrego M, Shao Z, Noguchi S, Rowbottom J, Stuart M, Grinsted LM, Fazal M, Ellis MJ. Lancet. 2016 Dec 17;388(10063):2997-3005. doi: 10.1016/S0140-6736(16)32389-3.