Dr. Coleman on Results of the VELIA Trial in Ovarian Cancer

Robert L. Coleman, MD, FACOG, FACS, professor and Ann Rife Cox Chair in Gynecology, Department of Gynecologic Oncology and Reproductive Medicine, Division of Surgery, The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center, discusses the results of the phase III VELIA trial examining veliparib in combination with chemotherapy in ovarian cancer.

In the trial, patients were randomized to 1 of 3 arms: carboplatin, paclitaxel, and placebo followed by placebo maintenance; veliparib plus carboplatin/paclitaxel followed by veliparib maintenance, or veliparib plus carboplatin/paclitaxel followed by placebo maintenance.

In this particular analysis, the primary end point was progression-free survival (PFS) for the veliparib arm versus the placebo arm. Investigators evaluated the efficacy of this combination in 3 distinct patient populations, each one being inclusive of the previous, says Coleman.

The first population included about 200 patients with either a germline or somatic BRCA mutation. The second group included patients with homologous recombination deficiency (HRD) and included those 200 patients with a BRCA mutation. Investigators also added patients with BRCA1/2 wild-type disease who also had HRD; this was about 421 patients total. The third cohort was the entire patient population of 757 patients. Results showed that in each of those patient cohorts, the addition of veliparib improved PFS significantly, concludes Coleman.