Dr. Barber on SCORPION Trial in Ovarian Cancer

Emma Barber, MD, UNC Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology, UNC School of Medicine, UNC Lineberger Comprehensive Cancer Center, discusses the importance of the SCORPION trial in ovarian cancer.

The trial that Barber is excited to see the results of regarding neoadjuvant chemotherapy is the SCORPION trial that is currently ongoing in Italy, she explains. Criticisms of previous randomized controlled trials in this area have been that the surgery wasn’t as aggressive as it is done in the United States. Barber says there were low rates of optimal cytoreduction, and therefore there was lower survival.

In that trial, investigators have published their short-term morbidity outcomes, and are doing very aggressive surgery. The question will be, she adds, is whether that is associated with a survival benefit in the long term, because that will be new data to inform this question.