ESMO 2022: For Desmoid Tumor, First Proven Therapy Shows Clear Benefit, “Should Become Standard”

PARIS, France—One of the most prominent late-breaking abstracts reported at ESMO 2022 in Paris was about a rare cancer, desmoid tumor, for which no standard therapy had yet been recommended and for which there had been a clear unmet need. A team from Germany presented new findings from a randomized study using nirogacestat, a “NOTCH inhibitor”—gamma secretase inhibitor—that the investigators suggest should be adopted as standard therapy. This is pertinent to oncology practices since desmoid tumors have often been treated as if they were sarcomas in the absence of proven therapies, and there is a risk that inappropriate therapy can worsen outcomes with desmoid tumor. Peter Goodwin caught up with principal author Bernd Kasper, MD, from Mannheim University in Heidelberg, Germany to get the details for OncTimes Talk.