Nurses Are ‘Critical Partners’ in the Clinical Trial Process

Oncology nurses play an essential role in biomarker testing, as well as guiding patients through the entire clinical trial process, explained Elizabeth Burton, PhD.

Burton is the director of Research Planning and Development, Surgical Oncology at The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center in Houston. At the 2024 European Society for Medial Oncology Congress, she discussed a longitudinal biomarker analysis from a phase 2 trial investigating neoadjuvant nivolumab (Opdivo) and relatlimab (Opdualag) in patients with stage IIIb or IV resectable melanoma (NCT02519322).

“There’s a tremendous opportunity to look at the biology and the mechanisms of the things that are happening in the patients [who] respond, but also being able to look at the baseline predictors. There’s been a lot of data presented from other studies—predominately with PD-1 and anti-CTLA4—showing different features that predict pathologic response, and event-driven outcomes as well,” Burton said. “Those have not been evaluated in the neoadjuvant setting for nivolumab and relatlimab in patients with surgically resectable melanoma. So in addition to conducting the clinical trial, we also wanted to perform this deep analysis where we do gene expression profiling on the patients’ baseline tissues, and also longitudinal tissues as well.”

READ MORE: The Changing Landscape of Clinical Trials in Cancer Care

Findings showed that the NanoString PanCancer IO360 panel lent insight into the tumor microenvironment and potential immune response over time. Notably, the researchers found that the B7-H3 protein may help predict response to nivolumab with relatlimab.

Transcript

Our oncology nursing, especially our research nursing and our clinical research teams are absolutely pivotal and critical partners in the entire process, both from recruiting our patients to the trials, helping them understand the point of the clinical trials and how they're contributing to understanding these mechanisms of disease, making sure that they're managed appropriately and safely, together with the physicians and in the treating teams. But really, our oncology nurses are truly the shepherds for our patients through their clinical trial journey and are absolutely critical part of the team.

Reference

Burton E, Wani K, Milton D, et al. Longitudinal biomarker analysis and outcomes for patients (pts) treated with neoadjuvant nivolumab (nivo) and relatlimab (rela) in surgically resectable melanoma.Annals of Oncology. 2024;35:S720 - S721. Abstract 1089P.