Clinical Trial Accrual Targeting Genomic Alterations After Next-Generation Sequencing at a Non-National Cancer Institute-Designated Cancer Program.

Purpose: Successful clinical trial accrual targeting uncommon genomic alterations will require broad national participation from both National Cancer Institute (NCI)-designated comprehensive cancer centers and community cancer programs. This report describes the initial experience with clinical trial accrual after next-generation sequencing (NGS) from three affiliated non-NCI-designated cancer programs.

Materials And Methods: Clinical trial participation was reviewed after enrollment of the first 200 patients undergoing comprehensive genomic profiling by NGS as part of an institutional intuitional review board-approved protocol at three affiliated hospitals in Rhode Island and was compared with published experience from NCI-designated cancer centers.

Results: Patient characteristics included a median age of 64 years, a median of two lines of prior therapy, and a predominance of GI carcinomas (58%). One hundred sixty-four of 200 patients (82%) had adequate tumor for NGS, 95% had genomic alterations identified, and 100% had variants of unknown significance. Fifteen of 164 patients (9.2%) enrolled in genotype-directed clinical trials, and three patients (1.8%) received commercially available targeted agents off clinical trials. The reasons for nonreceipt of NGS-directed therapy were no locally available matching trial (48.6%), ineligibility (33.6%) because of comorbidities or interim clinical deterioration, physician's choice of a different therapy (6.8%), or stable disease (11%).

Conclusion: This experience demonstrates that a program enrolling patients in specific targeted agent clinical trials after NGS can be implemented successfully outside of the NCI-designated cancer program network, with comparable accrual rates. This is important because targetable genes have rare mutation rates and clinical trial accrual after NGS is low.