Publications by authors named "Els VAN Nieuwenhuysen"

Background: Recurrent gynecological clear cell carcinoma (rGCCC) has a low objective response rate (ORR) to chemotherapy. Previous preclinical and clinical data suggest a potential synergy between immune checkpoint inhibitors and bevacizumab in rGCCC. Dostarlimab, a humanized monoclonal antibody targeting programmed cell death protein 1 (PD-1), combined with the anti-angiogenic bevacizumab, presents a novel therapeutic approach.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF
Article Synopsis
  • Imlunestrant is a next-generation oral selective estrogen receptor degrader being tested in the EMBER trial for patients with ER+ advanced breast cancer and endometrioid endometrial cancer (EEC).
  • The trial involves a dose-escalation design to determine optimal doses and measure safety, pharmacokinetics, and anticancer effects, focusing specifically on patients who have already undergone certain previous treatments.
  • Results showed manageable side effects and some evidence of antitumor activity, with better outcomes observed when imlunestrant was combined with abemaciclib compared to imlunestrant alone.
View Article and Find Full Text PDF
Article Synopsis
  • There are no special treatments approved for low grade serous ovarian cancer, and the usual treatments don't always work well.
  • A new combination of two medicines called avutometinib and defactinib might work better and is safer than regular treatments.
  • The study wants to see if using this new combo helps patients live longer without their cancer getting worse compared to other treatments doctors might choose.
View Article and Find Full Text PDF
Article Synopsis
  • Circulating cell-free DNA (cfDNA) is being studied as a noninvasive marker for cancer detection, and understanding its origins could enhance cancer diagnosis and treatment management.* -
  • The researchers created MetDecode, a deconvolution algorithm that identifies cancer tissue origins using DNA methylation patterns, and built a reference atlas from existing data for various cancers.* -
  • MetDecode showed high accuracy, correctly identifying tissue origins in 84.2% of plasma cfDNA samples from cancer patients, and can be accessed online for further use.*
View Article and Find Full Text PDF
Article Synopsis
  • Recurrent cervical cancer poses serious health risks, especially after initial treatment, leading to the need for new therapy options.
  • A phase 3 trial compared the effects of tisotumab vedotin to standard chemotherapy in 502 patients with recurrent or metastatic cervical cancer, focusing on overall survival.
  • Results show that tisotumab vedotin significantly improved median overall survival (11.5 months vs. 9.5 months) and progression-free survival (4.2 months vs. 2.9 months), with a higher response rate compared to chemotherapy, despite both groups experiencing a high incidence of adverse events.
View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Low-grade serous ovarian cancer (LGSOC) is a rare ovarian malignancy primarily affecting younger women and is characterized by an indolent growth pattern. It exhibits indolent growth and high estrogen/progesterone receptor expression, suggesting potential responsiveness to endocrine therapy. However, treatment efficacy remains limited due to the development of endocrine resistance.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

To identify credible causal risk variants (CCVs) associated with different histotypes of epithelial ovarian cancer (EOC), we performed genome-wide association analysis for 470,825 genotyped and 10,163,797 imputed SNPs in 25,981 EOC cases and 105,724 controls of European origin. We identified five histotype-specific EOC risk regions (p value <5 × 10) and confirmed previously reported associations for 27 risk regions. Conditional analyses identified an additional 11 signals independent of the primary signal at six risk regions (p value <10).

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Background: Low-grade serous and endometrioid ovarian cancers and adult-type granulosa cell tumors are rare ovarian malignancies that show high estrogen receptor positivity. Recurrences of these subtypes of ovarian cancer are often treated with conventional chemotherapy, although response rates are disappointing.

Primary Objective: To determine the overall response rate of the combination therapy of abemaciclib and letrozole in patients with estrogen receptor-positive rare ovarian cancers.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF
Article Synopsis
  • The study investigates the effectiveness of combining immunotherapy (durvalumab) and chemotherapy (carboplatin/paclitaxel) for advanced or recurrent endometrial cancer, focusing on its benefits for both mismatch repair-deficient (dMMR) and proficient (pMMR) patients.
  • In a phase III trial with 718 participants, the results showed significant improvements in progression-free survival (PFS) for both the durvalumab and the durvalumab + olaparib groups compared to the control group.
  • Subgroup analyses indicated that both dMMR and pMMR patients, as well as those with PD-L1 positivity, experienced notable PFS benefits, with
View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Purpose: Tissue factor is highly expressed in cervical carcinoma and can be targeted by tisotumab vedotin (TV), an antibody-drug conjugate. This phase Ib/II study evaluated TV in combination with bevacizumab, pembrolizumab, or carboplatin for recurrent or metastatic cervical cancer (r/mCC).

Methods: This open-label, multicenter study (ClinicalTrials.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Following the results of the PRIMA and PAOLA-1 trials, the most effective maintenance strategy for International Federation of Gynecology and Obstetrics stage III patients is still debated, raising the question which of those two maintenance strategies is the most effective: PARP inhibitors alone or PARP inhibitors in combination with bevacizumab. The ongoing NIRVANA-1 study will try to answer this question by assessing the efficacy and safety of niraparib + bevacizumab in comparison with niraparib alone after adjuvant chemotherapy for completely resected stage III patients. Stratification factors include tumor status, International Federation of Gynecology and Obstetrics stage (IIIA vs IIIB/IIIC) and the use of hyperthermic intraperitoneal chemotherapy during surgery - within the OVHIPEC-2 trial.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Objective: To determine the diagnostic value of whole-body diffusion-weighted magnetic resonance imaging (WB-DWI/MRI) to predict resectable disease at the time of secondary cytoreductive surgery for relapsed epithelial ovarian cancer with a platinum-free interval of at least 6 months.

Methods: A retrospective cohort study between January 2012 and December 2021 in a tertiary referral hospital. Inclusion criteria were: (a) first recurrence of epithelial ovarian cancer; (b) platinum-free interval of ≥6 months; (c) intent to perform secondary cytoreductive surgery with complete macroscopic resection; and (d) WB-DWI/MRI was performed.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Background: The PAOLA-1/ENGOT-ov25 trial showed improved progression-free (PFS) and overall survival (OS) in homologous recombination deficient (HRD) positive patients treated with olaparib, but not when HRD negative (HRD tested with MyChoice CDx PLUS [Myriad test]).

Patients And Methods: The academic Leuven HRD test consists of capture-based targeted sequencing of genome-wide single-nucleotide polymorphisms and coding exons of eight HR genes including BRCA1, BRCA2, and TP53. We compared the predictive value of the Leuven HRD versus Myriad HRD test for PFS and OS in the randomised PAOLA-1 trial.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Unlabelled: Ten to fifty percent of women with advanced or recurrent ovarian cancer develop malignant bowel obstruction (MBO). We described the management and examined the complications and survival of MBO in primary epithelial tubo-ovarian cancer patients.

Materials And Methods: The authors conducted a retrospective monocentric cohort study of tubo-ovarian cancer patients diagnosed with MBO between January 1st, 2011 until August 31st, 2017 at the University Hospitals Leuven, Belgium.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF
Article Synopsis
  • The study aimed to evaluate if patients with BRCA1/2-mutated or homologous recombination deficient (HRD) ovarian cancers benefited from the immune therapy atezolizumab in the phase III IMagyn050 trial.
  • Out of evaluated samples, 22% had BRCA1/2 mutations, and 46% were HRD, with most tumors showing low tumor mutation burden (TMB), and progression-free survival (PFS) was better in BRCA2-mutated and HRD tumors.
  • The trial concluded that neither BRCA1/2 mutation nor HRD provided significant advantages from atezolizumab, indicating low TMB levels and suggesting that genomic instability does not enhance sensitivity to immune checkpoint inhibitors
View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Background: Cyclin E1 (CCNE1) is a potential predictive marker and therapeutic target in tubo-ovarian high-grade serous carcinoma (HGSC). Smaller studies have revealed unfavorable associations for CCNE1 amplification and CCNE1 overexpression with survival, but to date no large-scale, histotype-specific validation has been performed. The hypothesis was that high-level amplification of CCNE1 and CCNE1 overexpression, as well as a combination of the two, are linked to shorter overall survival in HGSC.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Background: Known risk alleles for epithelial ovarian cancer (EOC) account for approximately 40% of the heritability for EOC. Copy number variants (CNVs) have not been investigated as EOC risk alleles in a large population cohort.

Methods: Single nucleotide polymorphism array data from 13 071 EOC cases and 17 306 controls of White European ancestry were used to identify CNVs associated with EOC risk using a rare admixture maximum likelihood test for gene burden and a by-probe ratio test.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Background: This study aimed to describe the treatment strategies and outcomes for women with newly diagnosed advanced high-grade serous or endometrioid ovarian cancer (OC).

Methods: This observational study collected real-world medical record data from eight Western countries on the diagnostic workup, clinical outcomes, and treatment of adult women with newly diagnosed advanced (Stage III-IV) high-grade serous or endometrioid OC. Patients were selected backward in time from April 1, 2018 (the index date), with a target of 120 patients set per country, followed for ≥20 months.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Fragmentation patterns of plasma cell-free DNA (cfDNA) are known to reflect nucleosome positions of cell types contributing to cfDNA. Based on cfDNA fragmentation patterns, the deviation in nucleosome footprints was quantified between diagnosed ovarian cancer patients and healthy individuals. Multinomial modeling was subsequently applied to capture these deviations in a per sample nucleosome footprint score.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Objective: Comparison of olaparib (OLA) monotherapy versus chemotherapy in patients with platinum-sensitive (PSOC) or platinum-resistant ovarian cancer (PROC).

Methods: Patients with measurable disease and ≥ 1 prior line of chemotherapy (CT) were randomized 2:1 to OLA (300 mg tablets, BID) or physician's choice CT.: for PSOC: Carboplatin-Pegylated-Liposomal-Doxorubicin (PLD) or Carboplatin-Gemcitabine; for PROC: PLD, Topotecan, Paclitaxel or Gemcitabine.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Objective: Because elderly patients with ovarian cancer are underrepresented in randomized studies, this study aimed to expand our knowledge on the safety and effectiveness of frontline treatment with bevacizumab in combination with standard carboplatin and paclitaxel chemotherapy in patients aged 70 years and older with a diagnosis of Federation of Gynecology and Obstetrics (FIGO) stage IV ovarian cancer in routine clinical practice in Belgium.

Methods: Patients aged 70 years and older with FIGO stage IV ovarian cancer were included in a multicenter, non-interventional prospective studyto evaluate the safety and effectiveness of treatment with bevacizumab in combination with frontline carboplatin and paclitaxel chemotherapy. Comprehensive geriatric assessments were performed at baseline and during treatment.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Polygenic risk scores (PRS) for epithelial ovarian cancer (EOC) have the potential to improve risk stratification. Joint estimation of Single Nucleotide Polymorphism (SNP) effects in models could improve predictive performance over standard approaches of PRS construction. Here, we implemented computationally efficient, penalized, logistic regression models (lasso, elastic net, stepwise) to individual level genotype data and a Bayesian framework with continuous shrinkage, "select and shrink for summary statistics" (S4), to summary level data for epithelial non-mucinous ovarian cancer risk prediction.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Transient receptor potential (TRP) channels excel in cellular sensing as they allow rapid ion influx across the plasma membrane in response to a variety of extracellular cues. Recently, a distinct TRP mRNA expression signature was observed in stromal cells (ESC) and epithelial cells (EEC) of the endometrium, a tissue in which cell phenotypic plasticity is essential for normal functioning. However, it is unknown whether TRP channel mRNA expression is subject to the phenotypic switching that occurs during epithelial to mesenchymal transition (EMT) and mesenchymal to epithelial transition (MET), and whether TRP channel mRNA expression is associated with aggressive phenotypes in endometrial cancer (EC).

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Introduction: Lymphovascular space invasion (LVSI), deep (>1/3) stromal invasion (DSI) and large tumor size (>4 cm) have been identified as predictors for intermediate risk for recurrence according to Sedlis (at least two of the prior risk factors) in FIGO stage I cervical cancer. Adjuvant radiotherapy (RT) has been advocated in these patients(1,2), but remains controversial.

Method: All consecutive patients (1997-2017) with cervical cancer FIGO (2009) stage IB1 (≤4 cm) were included.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF