Second-line Therapy for Patients With Progressive Poorly Differentiated Extra-pulmonary Neuroendocrine Carcinoma

There is currently no standard treatment beyond first-line etoposide/platinum-based chemotherapy in patients with progressive poorly differentiated extra-pulmonary neuroendocrine carcinoma. Therefore the treatment of patients whose disease progresses on or after this first-line treatment is an area of unmet need. Combination regimens such as irinotecan/5-fluorouracil/folinic acid are a second-line treatment option currently used in Europe and world-wide for this subset of patients. However, there is currently no trial evidence supporting this treatment regimen in these patients. Results of the NAPOLI-1 phase III trial of liposomal irinotecan in the treatment of patients with metastatic pancreatic adenocarcinoma after gemcitabine-based therapy reported improved survival for those patients who received a combination of liposomal irinotecan with 5-FU/folinic acid compared to those patients who received 5-FU/folinic acid alone. Liposomal irinotecan has been found to show an improved distribution into tumour tissue in comparison to irinotecan, and this may have clinical benefit in patients with extra-pulmonary neuroendocrine carcinoma. Docetaxel is standardly used as a second-line treatment option in patients with small cell lung cancer who have progressed on primary etoposide-platinum combination therapy. Therefore this drug could also have clinical benefit in patients with extra-pulmonary neuroendocrine carcinoma as the biology of the disease is similar to small cell lung cancer. The overall aim of the NET-02 trial is to select a treatment for continuation to a Phase III trial. The intention of the trial is to determine whether liposomal irinotecan/5-fluorouracil/folinic acid and docetaxel are sufficiently active in this population of patients. If both treatments are found to be efficacious, selection criteria will be applied to select a treatment to take forward. 102 eligible participants will be randomised to receive either liposomal irinotecan/5-fluorouracil/fo