Luz Saúde : First Clinical Trial at HBA on the Initiative of a Researcher

First Clinical Trial at HBA on the Initiative of a Researcher

09-10-18

Hospital Beatriz Ângelo (HBA) promotes, for the first time, a clinical trial on the initiative of a researcher - José Luís Passos Coelho, director of the Oncology Department. The trial, already in recruitment phase, counts with a team of six researchers and 22 collaborators, among physicians, nurses, pharmacists and study coordinators, and views to study the effects of an innovating medication in patients with testicular and ovarian metastatic tumours.

This is a clinical trial 'of high scientific interest, that proposes to assess the efficacy of immunotherapy, currently expanding to a large number of neoplasms, in platinum-refractory germ cell tumours', explains the coordinating researcher in the presentation of the trial, which will involve patients with testicular and ovarian tumours not having obtained the expected results in the first line of treatment.

The trial is multicentral, counting with the collaboration of the Portuguese Institute of Oncology (IPO) in Lisboa, Oporto and Coimbra. The team of researchers, led by José Luís Passos Coelho, includes the specialists Francisco Peralta Branco (HBA), Susana Esteves (IPO Lisboa), Margarida Brito (IPO Lisboa), Joaquina Maurício (IPO Porto), Gabriela Sousa (IPO Coimbra) and José Carlos Machado (IPATIMUP).

Immunotherapy has shown to be effective in multiples neoplasms, 'with prolonged remission and eventual 'cure' in some patients, also being a first or second line standard treatment in several types of metastatic cancer, such as melanoma, lung, kidney, urothelium, head and neck or lymphoma', refers furthermore the professor and oncologist José Luís Passos Coelho, in the presentation of this clinical trial.