The world’s largest study aimed at improving the treatment of a rare type of bone cancer that mainly affects children and young adults is well underway, an international conference was told.
The EURAMOS Phase III clinical trial, which involves a collaboration across 11 European countries, as well as the US and Canada, is on course to recruit some 1400 patients over the next few years to improve treatment for osteosarcoma, the most common bone cancer in children.
People with osteosarcoma are usually first given chemotherapy before the tumour is surgically removed, followed by another course of chemotherapy. The effect of the initial course of chemotherapy can vary however; in some cases there is a good response and in others a poor response. This can have a bearing on the ultimate outcome of the treatment, with poor responders to the initial course of chemotherapy tending to have a worse chance of surviving the disease. The EURAMOS trial will examine a different treatment regime for ‘poor responders’ to see if survival rates can be improved.Read more here of the article here, or read about
the clinical trial. It is currently recruiting patients ages 5-40 in a number of states and countries.
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