Disparities Persist in the Endometrial Cancer Space
While the recent approval of a Jemperli-based regimen was an exciting advancement in the endometrial cancer space, racial disparities still exist and need to be addressed, and expert said.
Following this summer’s approval by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) of Jemperli (dostarlimab) plus chemotherapy, followed by standalone Jemperli, for the treatment of adults with primary advanced or recurrent mismatch repair deficient (dMMR) or microsatellite instability-high (MSI-H) endometrial cancer, unmet needs remain among certain patient populations, one expert tells CURE®.
“There's still clearly an unmet need for the population of patients that (means we need to ask), ‘What happens when they recur on this on this combination?’ You know? We start to really, again, limit how much we have to offer patients who may have some partial responses, to this combination, and then recur,” said Dr. Eloise Chapman-Davis, who specializes in gynecologic oncology at Weill Cornell Medicine in New York City and a member of the Foundation for Women’s Cancer’s board of directors.
The FDA approved Jemperli plus carboplatin and paclitaxel followed by Jemperli, according to a July 31 news release from Jemperli manufacturer GSK, making it the first frontline immunotherapy and chemotherapy combination to be approved for this population of patients with endometrial cancer.
Black women, according to a 2021 article published by Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, are nearly twice as likely as White women to die of endometrial cancer, and the greatest increase in cases of endometrial cancer is among Black women.
“Looking at the endometrial cancer health care disparities overall, you see a lot of Black women are more likely to present with these core histology subtypes and advanced disease,” said Chapman-Davis. “I think this (FDA approval) helps to get (to) that specific patient population of some of the minority population that are more likely to have these advanced cancers and also more likely to recur, to give them options, which also makes me hopeful that maybe this may help to close the gap of some of the healthcare disparities that we see among the Black population.”
Transcript:
Looking at the endometrial cancer health care disparities overall, you see a lot of Black women are more likely to present with these core histology subtypes and advanced disease. I think this (FDA approval) helps to get (to) that specific patient population of some of the minority population that are more likely to have these advanced cancers and also more likely to recur, to give them options, which also makes me hopeful that maybe this may help to close the gap of some of the health care disparities that we see among the Black population. So that's one thing.
There's still clearly an unmet need for the population of patients (for whom we have to ask), “What happens when they recur on this combination?” We start to really, again, limit how much we have to offer patients who may have some partial responses to this combination, and then recur. So as we start looking more into targeted therapies, and as we do a little bit more, that's how we kind of came up with this, we need to really start to think about, “What are some of the other molecular things that we can attack for drugs?” and kind of target those that may be more specific in these populations that are in the recurrent group of populations that don't respond to immunotherapy in combination with chemotherapy.
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