Combination therapy is not beneficial for certain patients with ovarian cancer

OncLive and MedPage Today highlighted research presented by the University of Cincinnati Cancer Center's Thomas Herzog that found a combination therapy of afuresertib and paclitaxel did not lead to better survival outcomes when compared to only treating with paclitaxel in patients with platinum-resistant ovarian cancer.

Afuresertib targets a specific protein called pAKT associated with pathways that support tumor growth, while paclitaxel is a common chemotherapy drug administered to patients with platinum-resistant ovarian cancer.

Herzog presented data from the phase 2 PROFECTA-II/GOG-3044 trial at the 2025 Society of Gynecologic Oncology Annual Meeting on Women’s Cancer. The trial found a median progression-free survival of 4.3 months for patients receiving the combination therapy compared to 4.1 months for those receiving paclitaxel alone.

"Clearly, this was a definitive negative trial for the overall population," said Herzog, MD, a University of Cincinnati Cancer Center member, the Paul and Carolyn Flory Professor in Gynecologic Oncology in the UC College of Medicine and director of UC Health’s Gynecologic Cancer Disease Center. "However, the biomarker data is provocative, but remember, this is hypothesis-generating only, as it's nonanalytic.

“Effective treatments for [platinum-resistant ovarian cancer] remain limited, thus novel agents are needed,” Herzog added. “Biomarker-driven strategies targeting pAKT may refine patient selection and enhance treatment outcomes in [platinum-resistant ovarian cancer]. However, further validation will be required to confirm this biomarker strategy.”

Read the OncLive article.

Read the MedPage Today article.

Featured photo at top of Thomas Herzog. Photo provided.