Dr. Chung on the COMPASS Trial in Pancreatic Cancer

Vincent Chung, MD, associate clinical professor, Department of Medical Oncology and Therapeutics Research, director of the Phase I Program, City of Hope, discusses the COMPASS trial in pancreatic cancer.

The most exciting trial that came out of the 2019 Gastrointestinal Cancer Symposium was the COMPASS trial, says Chung. COMPASS was a prospective trial that was conducted in Canada in which patients who were undergoing frontline therapy underwent concurrent tumor tissue biopsy and sequencing. Investigators did RNA sequencing as well as patient-derived organoids, results of which were received an average of 39 days later, says Chung.

When the patient progressed on their first-line therapy, they could receive a targeted therapy that was tailored to what their genomic profile was. This demonstrates the utility of precision medicine in pancreatic cancer—a disease which is no longer one entity, explains Chung. As such, each subtype of pancreatic cancer has a different survival outcome as well as potentially different treatment options.