New Hope for Women with Poor Prognostic Ovarian Cancer

May 17, 2023, LYON

SALVOVAR, a project funded by the European Commission under the Horizon program, hosted its kickoff meeting in Lyon, France on Monday, May 15, 2023. Aiming to restore hope to women with ovarian cancer, SALVOVAR is a European multi-disciplinary clinical project meant to improve the management of patients with poor prognostic ovarian cancer after neoadjuvant chemotherapy.
It is a pragmatic randomized phase III trial to assess the utility of adjusting chemotherapy dose and dosing schedule with the SALVage (SALVOVAR) weekly dose-dense regimen in patients with poor prognostic OVARian (SALVOVAR) cancers based on the poor tumor primary chemosensitivity and incomplete debulking surgery.

Lyon University Hospital (HCL) will oversee and coordinate the project over its 5-year duration. The clinical trial will be sponsored by the French collaborative group ARCAGY-GINECO in collaboration with The European Network for Gynaecological Oncological Trial groups (ENGOT). The partners are spread across six European countries (United Kingdom, France, Italy, Netherlands, Israel, Czech Republic, and Spain) with 100 recruitment centers.

Professor Benoit You from HCL, a medical oncologist and SALVOVAR’s Coordinating Manager, presided over SALVOVAR’s kick-off meeting, assembling the partners for the first time. This cornerstone meeting was the first time for the partners to connect and develop dynamic working relationships.

“We are happy to launch this original European collaborative multi-disciplinary project focused on one objective: to improve the survival of women with poor prognostic ovarian cancers. We are aiming to recruit the first patient on May 1, 2024,” said Professor You.
The project has eight work packages ranging from the overall project coordination to clinical trials, statistics, and economic evaluation.

Work Package 3, managed by Alexandra Dima, Ph.D., Department of Social Psychology and Quantitative Psychology, University of Barcelona, and Laura del Carpio, Ph.D., Health Technology Assessment in Primary Care and Mental Health (PRISMA) Group, Fundació Sant Joan de Déu, Barcelona, are building the foundations for an innovative shared decision-making tool to be used by clinicians and patients in the context of therapeutic uncertainty. Together with Professor Julien Peron and Dr. Thibaut Reverdy (HCL), they are currently organizing a patient and clinician advisory group to share their valuable experiences and insights to help shape this research.
“This is a unique opportunity to understand and integrate patient and clinician perspectives of the treatment decision-making process in the context of a prospective trial. Through our patient and clinician advisory group, we aim to ensure that their perspectives are represented throughout this work and that the future tool will meet their expectations,” explained Alexandra Dima.

Even though the SALVOVAR project just started on May 1, 2023, the partners are already hard at work. Coming soon there will be a dedicated LinkedIn page and Twitter group as well as a website in July 2023.

 

Project contact: Prof. Benoit You, benoit.you@chu-lyon.fr

Media contact: Susannah Carroll, suscarroll@hotmail.com and Ane De Las Heras, ane.delasheras@ecpc.org