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El PazoS: Sarcoma research for patients. Working with patients.

Understanding the basics and providing targeted treatment

The number of targeted drugs used for cancer treatment is steadily increasing. In contrast to conventional chemotherapy, these drugs do not act as undirected cell toxins, but rather inhibit certain processes in cell metabolism. Although we are aware of the molecules that these drugs target, the reasons for whether treatment is effective or not in individual patients very often remain obscure.

Pazopanib (brand name: Votrient) has been used for several years to treat patients with soft tissue sarcomas and is currently the only targeted therapy in this disease group. On average, pazopanib treatment leads to a stabilization of the sarcoma disease over a period of 4-5 months. However, there are also patients for whom in exceptional cases pazopanib works well and over the longer term. The reasons for this are still unknown.

 

Logo El PazoS
 

Learning from unusual disease histories

As part of the El PazoS project, we want to investigate the causes of a particularly succesful therapy response to pazopanib. In the future, we hope to know which group of patients will benefit most from treatment with pazopanib before starting therapy. We suspect that there are similarities in tumor inheritance in patients with a very good response to pazopanib, and we therefore want to study this group of patients in more detail. Since sarcomas are very rare diseases, El PazoS is carried out as a nationwide project in Germany so we can reach as many sarcoma patients as possible. The cooperation partners are the National Center for Tumor Diseases (NCT) Heidelberg, the patient organization Lebenshaus e.V., the German Cancer Consortium (DKTK), and the German Interdisciplinary Sarcoma Group (GISG).

 

Researching sarcomas together

By participating in El PazoS, you can make an important contribution to sarcoma research, and the analyses conducted in the project can also lead to a better understanding of your own disease and possibly provide insights into further therapy options. To participate, a personal interview at a DKTK center and a blood sample are required. The additional removal of tumor tissue is not necessary.

Participation is possible if:

    you are at least 18 years old,
    you have soft tissue sarcoma,
    you have been treated with pazopanib for at least 12 months,
    a sample of your tumor tissue from the time before beginning pazopanib treatment is available.

To determine whether you are eligible to participate and, if necessary, to plan your participation, please send your contact details and an up-to-date doctor’s letter by email to TMO@nct-heidelberg.de or by fax to +49 6221 56-5389. After examining your documents, we will contact you and coordinate the next steps with you.

Heads of the clinical trial

PD Dr. med. Horak

PD Dr. med. Horak
Translational Medical Oncology