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Public Health & Intelligence

minutes /

Cancer Clinical Trials Team

Gyle Square

1 South Gyle Crescent
EDINBURGH EH12 9EB
Telephone : 0131 275 6000
RNID Typetalk 18001
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Scottish Cancer Trials Breast Group

Friday, 14th August 2015 from 15.00 – 16.00

Boardroom 1, Gyle Square, Edinburgh

Present:Iain Macpherson (IMc) - Chairperson

Eve Macdonald (EM)

Angela Bowman (AB) - via teleconference

Suzanne Elgammal (SE) – via teleconference

Beatrix Elsberger (BE) – via teleconference

Wilma Jack (WJ) – via teleconference

Ian Kunkler (IK) – via teleconference

Peter Hall (PH) – via teleconference

Jane Macaskill (JM) - via teleconference

Glyn Neades (GN) - via teleconference

Diana Ritchie (DR) – via teleconference

Minutes:Iona Douglas (ID)

Apologies- Nick Abbot (NA), Douglas Adamson (DA), Abdulla Alhasso (AA), David Cameron (DC), Ian Daltrey (ID), Kate Fitzgerald (KF), Judith Fraser (JF), Larry Hayward (LH), Vince Kerr (VK), Alison Lannigan (AL), Joseph Loane (JL), Graeme Lumsden (GL), Marjory Maclennan (MMacL), Mike McKirdy (MM), Olga OOikonomidou (OO), Colin Purdie (CP), Laszlo Romics (LR), Alison Stillie (AS), Stefan Symeonides (SS), Oliver Young (OY), Frances Yuille (FY).

  1. Minutes/Actions from previous meeting

The minutes of the previous meeting, held 22nd May 2015, were approved as a true record.

Groups fund Issue

IMc confirmed that he has a meeting planned with the Head of College next week to discuss the group funds. IMc to update the group at the November meeting. ACTION: IMc

Trial Concepts

IMc advised that this will be covered under agenda item 3. Close action.

Website

This will also be covered on the agenda, under item 5. Close action.

Annual meeting – teleconference.

EM noted that this action is complete and there is a further teleconferences planned at the end of September to discuss the annual meeting. IMc added that the annual meeting has been schedule to take place at the Hilton, Edinburgh airport on the 28-29th Jan 2016.

  1. Current Trials – CaCTUS/non-CaCTUS

CACTUS Trials

Aristacat

EM informed the meeting that there is no update since the last meeting in May. Follow-up will continue, with last patient, last visit expected at the end of the year with analysis to take place Q2 2016.

SOLD

EM advised that there is also no update on SOLD. The trial closed to recruitment in December 2014 with a total of 2176 patients.

Radiotype DX

IK informed the meeting that he recently presented on this at the annual SCTBG meeting.

The proposal for this trial is to develop and validate a signature which will identify those patients who will not recur in the absence of radiotherapy. This trial will be in collaboration with Associate Professor Felix Feng and Professor Lori Pearce from PFS Genomics.

IK advised that we now have the advanced draft of the protocol, but work has still to be done on the statistics section.

IK said that there has been a lot of work done from ISD on the protocol and the IRAS application. IK continued that there is no confirmation of funding yet and that the team are still working on finalising the costings.

IK mentioned that the timeline for submission to ethics is 10th September for the meeting on 24th September.

WJ added that they hope to establish a start up meeting.

IK informed the group that the Scottish Conservation and the Prime 1 trial are now involved.

  1. Proposal for any new trials

IMc explained that, prior to the meeting, BE sent out slides and a paper/Questionnaire on a new trial.

BE informed the meeting that they are in the very early stages of this. We are currently trying to establish what is going on for hepatic re-sections for liver metastasis.

BE said that we first looked into this as a literature review, but the evidence is quite poor. The majority of the published data is based on retrospective single centre case series, conducted in European institutions and we have no idea what current practice is in Scotland or in the UK.

There are 3 parts to this work:

  • what metastatic breast cancer patients think of it
  • what HPB surgeons in the country have done over the past 5 years
  • what the viewpoints of Medical Oncologists are regarding surgicalresection

We will send out survey questionnaires for:

  • metastatic breast cancer patients (via ICPV and Maggies’)
  • HPB Surgeons (via HPBGBI/AUGIS)
  • Medical Oncologists

AB felt that this was a good study target, but wondered if some of the ground has already been covered.

EB noted that there has been no data published.

IMc felt that the potential candidates for local therapy are few and far between.

IMc wondered if modalities other than surgery should be considered. There is a trial in Glasgow, called the COMET trial, which is assessing stereotactic ablative radiotherapyIMc asked if it would be worthwhile looking at this in addition to surgery.IK added that there are limited Cyberknife facilities in the UK. EB advised that she is interested in what is being done in the UK and what kind of patients are being considered for liver resections.

BE mentioned that she hopes to send the survey out to members of the SCTBC to canvass opinion. BE noted that she is not setting up a trial, but is keen to see what current knowledge and perceptions of hepatic resection are.

IMc felt the survey was good and that it may uncover knowledge gaps and that he would be happy to circulate it around the SCTBG group, but suggested that it go out as an online survey to maximise responses.

IMc also advised that he could put BE in touch with the UKBCM group for more of a UK view. ACTION: IMc

AB said that she feels that some of the questions need to be more neutral. Sometimes the wording can determine the way a question is answered. AB also noted that it may be helpful to have statements of fact i.e. are you aware that…

IK stated that there is probably more support in the oncology community and suspects that if we did a trial, we would need a large sample size across Europe or globally.

GN agreed. Without good strong evidence things won’t change.

JM felt that it could be helpful to widen the survey and ask about recovery time and reasons why patients are not referred to resections.

IK observed that there were no open ended questions and it could be helpful to open them up more. BE agreed and said that she will update the survey based on this discussion. ACTION: BE

BE will also arrange for the survey to be sent to ID/EM to circulate around the SCTBG. ACTION: BE

  1. Annual Meeting

IMc confirmed that the annual meeting will be held on the 28th and 29th January 2016 at the Airport Hilton Hotel in Edinburgh.

IMc advised that planning is already underway, IMc said that the programme has still to be confirmed, but that we are keen to keep the same format as last year, but with more networking opportunities. In addition there may be fewer topics included as felt there was a lot to get through at the last meeting in a limited amount of time.

IK felt the previous meeting went well and liked the format and agenda items covered.

IMc asked if anyone had any further ideas on speakers.

IK suggested local therapies.

IMc mentioned that thinking ahead to the next year; we could have something on precision medicine trials such as AURORAtrial (particularly as DC is the UK CI). and the PlasmaMatch study under development by Nick Turner.

IK noted that the trial PRIME TIME has recently been funded by CRUK. We could invite Charlotte Cole to talk about this.

IMc agreed and stated that it is important to cover all spectrums. We could also invite Adele Frances from the Royal College of Surgeons to talk about enhancing surgical research.

The group were happy with these suggestions.

WJ felt that it would be useful to have a San Antonio update. IMC agreed. GN felt that it would be good to have this slot on the audit day. GN suggested having it as a session on the Friday afternoon to help keep attendance up.

IK wondered about asking CharlesSwanton from London on Cancer literature and the focus on prevention and early detection. IMc said that this will tie in well with the prevision medicine talks.

SE also suggested a session on inflammatory breast cancer.

IMc advised that he would start to engage with the speakers and pull together a draft programme. ACTION: IMc

GN felt that the format on the Friday should be similar to that of last year. He suggested inviting a speaker from Denmark to get their perspective and present their national data. This was agreed by the group. GN agreed to contact. ACTION: GN

PH said that we could consider having a representative speak from SMCabout funding around new drugs. IMc stated that this was another great idea. GN suggested that he could contact someone from SMC. ACTION: GN

  1. SCTBG website

IMc informed the meeting that EM is putting together a proposal an SCTBG website which can be accessed via the ISD website. This will include:

  • An overview
  • Remit
  • Contact details
  • Meetings
  • Trial updates
  • Proposals

EM will send out a proposal to SCTBG for further comments. ACTION: EM

  1. AOB

There being no other business, the meeting was closed.

  1. Date of next meeting

The next meeting will be held on 27th November from 15.00 – 16.00.