Patients with stage 1 & 2 endometrial cancer are treated with surgery. Despite the fact
that disease is confound to uterus, unfortunately some of these patients may relapse and
die of their disease. Postoperative radiotherapy cannot improve survival. Chemotherapy
has shown survival benefit in more advanced stage disease (stage 3 & 4).
This study evaluates if one can improve survival in intermediate and high risk
early-stage patients by offering them postoperative chemotherapy. This is a randomized
phase 3 trial where effect of postoperative chemotherapy is compared with postoperative
observation alone (standard strategy).
Substudy: Translational research
Additional locations may be listed on ClinicalTrials.gov for NCT01244789.
See trial information on ClinicalTrials.gov for a list of participating sites.
Patients with medium and high risk stage I and II endometrial cancers have, despite
radical surgery, a rather high risk for progression.
Adjuvant radiotherapy was the traditional therapy for many decades. Four randomized phase
III studies and a meta-analysis have revealed that adjuvant radiotherapy improves local
control at the cost of excessive short and long term toxicity, though has absolutely no
impact on survival.
Two phase III studies have randomized between adjuvant radiotherapy versus adjuvant
chemotherapy, both failed to show any difference in survival between radiotherapy and
chemotherapy, though both studies are criticized for inferior chemotherapy regimens or
inclusion of good prognosis patients. The GOG-122 study on more advanced cases (stage 3 &
4) randomized between combination chemotherapy versus whole abdominal irradiation and
found significant improvement in survival in the chemotherapy arm.
NSGO-EC-9501 and MaNGO studies have indicated that adjuvant chemotherapy added to
adjuvant radiotherapy may improve survival compared to adjuvant radiotherapy alone in
early stage medium and high risk patients. One may conclude that impact on survival comes
only from chemotherapy. Many investigators have therefore adapted adjuvant chemotherapy
as standard treatment in various countries including Denmark. However, such conclusion
has low level of evidence, as there are no randomized phase III studies comparing
postoperative observation alone versus adjuvant chemotherapy.
It is of utmost importance to demonstrate efficacy of adjuvant combination chemotherapy
in a randomized phase III trial comparing to no further treatment in the medium and high
risk node negative stage 1 & 2 patients.
Combination chemotherapy regimen of paclitaxel-carboplatin is proposed in this study, as
this combination is effective and well tolerated.
The eligible patients for such a study are a fraction of patients with endometrial cancer
therefore this study will be performed within the ENGOT collaboration.
Lead OrganizationDanish Gynecological Cancer Group