Marleen Kok (NKI) presents TONIC study results at ASCO 2018

06-06-2018

During the ASCO Annual Meeting in Chicago (1-5 June 2018), NKI oncologist Marleen Kok presented the results of the TONIC study, of which the first part has now been completed.

'In the TONIC study, we investigated the effect of five different pre-treatments during two weeks prior to immunotherapy with nivolumab, in patients with metastatic triple negative breast cancer (TNBC). Breast cancer is a so-called 'cold' tumor: there are few immune cells that recognize the cancer. The idea of the TONIC study is that pre-treatment with chemotherapy or radiation in 'cold' tumors triggers an immune response that can subsequently be strengthened by the immune therapeutic.

The pre-treatments consisted of radiotherapy, a low dose of doxorubicin, cyclophosphamide or cisplatin or no pre-treatment, respectively. The aim of this pilot study was to determine the feasibility and safety of this approach and to select the most promising pre-treatments for further examination in the second part of the study. We demonstrated - in relatively small groups of patients per study group - that this design is feasible and safe. Furthermore, we saw more responses after cisplatin-nivolumab and doxorubicin-nivolumab. We also saw more characteristics in tumor biopsies that could match an increased immune response after this pre-treatment with cisplatin and doxorubicin. We have now started the 2^nd part of TONIC in which we are further investigating the effect of pre-treatment with doxorubicin in a larger group of patients.

Marleen Kok (NKI) presents TONIC study results at ASCO 2018

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