Anyone in UPenn SURMOUNT/CLEVER study of DTCs?

Staceybee

Is anybody in the SURMOUNT/CLEVER study at UPenn? I am fascinated by the concept of this study and applied to be in it last year, - and would have traveled to participate, but they said that I did not qualify because my cancer was not considered a high enough stage – even though I had 1 of 2 lymph nodes affected (could have been more but my surgeon was against going back and checking more nodes). The study coordinator said I would have qualified if I had a higher oncotype or had chemo.

As I understand it, in the SURMOUNT part of the study, they test a patient's bone marrow from the hip bone for dormant distributed tumor cells (DTCs) and, if found, the patient moves on to taking the anti-malarial drug hydroxychloroquine or everolimus (Affinitor). Then they test again to see if DTCs have been impacted – hopefully lowered or eradicated.

If you are in the study, I would be very interested to hear about how it is going. I showed the study details to my oncologist at a major cancer center and asked if I could get a test for DTCs – she barely looked at it and said they don't do the test at my cancer center. I am super interested in the potential for hydroxychloroquine since it is already used "off-label" for conditions such as rheumatoid arthritis.

Thanks in advance for sharing any experiences!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QQdhSDiaGJQ

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iwFIS0Vm7XI

https://www.pennmedicine.org/cancer/cancer-research/translating-research-to-practice/breast-cancer-tce/surmount-study

FarAwayToo

Hi Staceybee, thank you for sharing this info, very interesting!

Here is a link to clinical trials.gov database.

https://clinicaltrials.gov/ct2/show/NCT02732171

Here are the inclusion criteria, as far as type and severity of primary cancer:

• Pathologically-confirmed invasive breast cancer in axillary lymph nodes or tumor with triple negative subtype: negative estrogen receptor (ER), progesterone receptor (PR) and Her2-overexpression by ASCO-CAP guidelines or tumor with a Breast Cancer Recurrence Score of ≥ 25 per the Genomic Health Oncotype DX breast cancer test, or residual disease after neoadjuvant chemotherapy.

So, even though you had cancer in a lymph node they told you your case wasn't "bad enough"? I know a lot of these studies want to concentrate on higher risk patients. Sadly, this means that a lot of time hormone positive/Her2 negative patients are excluded, unless they had extensive involvement or high enough genomic risk.