Vicki Keedy, MD, assistant professor of medicine, clinical director, Sarcoma Program, Vanderbilt-Ingram Cancer Center, discusses a trial looking at quantitative imaging biomarkers of treatment response in osteosarcoma.

Keedy says neoadjuvant chemotherapy is important to the treatment of osteosarcoma and can be predictive and prognostic. However, patients are currently receiving 12-20 weeks of chemotherapy before surgery. Keedy says this means that patients could be receiving 4-5 months of chemotherapy without any benefit.

The goal of the study is to use DCE MRI, quantitative MRI, and FLT-PET early on to see if chemotherapy response can be predicted. In the future, Keedy hopes the results from this trial can be applied to determine whether switching therapies will be effective.

Videos

Dr. Keedy Discusses Imaging Biomarkers in Osteosarcoma 

Vicki Keedy, MD, assistant professor of medicine, clinical director, Sarcoma Program, Vanderbilt-Ingram Cancer Center, discusses resistance in patients with GIST.

Though a target exists in mutated KIT and PDGFR genes for GIST, resistance still occurs. Keedy says that both primary (patients who do not respond at all to imatinib) and secondary (patients respond and progress later on) resistance is seen.

There remains a need to determine molecular drivers of this resistance and how to block it. At the 2013 Chemotherapy Foundation Symposium, Keedy spoke about these mechanisms of resistance and the drugs that are available to target them. These drugs, though they may seem similar, can get at the mechanisms in a different way.

Dr. Keedy on Resistance in Patients With GIST

Vicki Keedy, MD, Assistant Professor of Medicine, Clinical Director, Sarcoma Program, Vanderbilt-Ingram Cancer Center, discusses the use of regorafenib for the treatment of patients with GIST.

Once patients progressed through imatinib and sunitinib, they had no FDA-approved options to treat their GIST. Many of these patients were treated off-label and by community doctors, rather than seek treatment on a clinical trial at an academic center.

Regorafenib provides an effective third-line drug, but Keedy says patients still are not coming onto clinical trials.

Vicki Keedy, MD

Articles

Dr. Keedy Discusses Imaging Biomarkers in Osteosarcoma

Dr. Keedy on Resistance in Patients With GIST

Dr. Keedy on Regorafenib for the Treatment of GIST