Dr. Sonpavde Discusses Current Clinical Trials in Penile Cancer

Guru Sonpavde, MD, director of Bladder Cancer at the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, discusses current clinical trials in penile cancer.

EGFR is overexpressed at the protein and gene expression level, and has gene amplification at the DNA level in penile cancer, making it a target, says Sonpavde.

In the HER family of inhibitors, there was a trial with dacomitinib that was recently published, showing a response rate in the first-line neoadjuvant setting of about 32%. And afatinib (Gilotrif) is being looked at in the post-platinum salvage setting.

Additionally, pembrolizumab (Keytruda) is being investigated in the post-platinum setting, and the combination of ipilimumab (Yervoy) plus nivolumab (Opdivo) is being investigated all rare cancers.