SPECTAlung: improving clinical trial access for patients with thoracic tumors

Hear Dr Jessica Menis and Dr Benjamin Besse to talk to ecancertv at WIN 2015 about SPECTAlung.

The first patients with thoracic malignancies are now entering SPECTAlung (EORTC trial 1335). Through SPECTAlung, eligible patients can be efficiently allocated to relevant therapeutic biomarker-driven clinical trials.

SPECTAlung is a standardized, quality-assured molecular screening platform for tumor characterization and storage of human biological material for the purpose of integrating new biomarkers into clinical trials and optimizing access of patients to therapeutic biomarker-driven clinical trials.

SPECTAlung plans to recruit 500 patients with pathologically confirmed lung cancer, malignant pleural mesothelioma, thymoma or thymic carcinoma at any stage during its first year. In subsequent years, 500-1000 patients will be recruited per year.

SPECTAlung, coordinated by the EORTC Lung Cancer Group in collaboration with the European Thoracic Oncology Platform (ETOP) and the EORTC Pathobiology Group, is being conducted at 18 sites located in twelve countries: Belgium, Denmark, France, Germany, Ireland, Italy, Poland, Slovenia, Spain, Switzerland, The Netherlands, and the United Kingdom.

SPECTAlung is supported by InBev Baillet-Latour.

John Bean, PhD
EORTC, Medical Science Writer