Clinical Research Directory

The STOP-MED CTRCD Trial

Cancer therapy-related cardiac dysfunction (CTRCD) is when the heart's ability to pump oxygenated blood to the body is compromised. It is a side effect of cancer therapy which can occur as commonly as in 1 in 5 patients. When this occurs, heart failure medications are started to protect the heart from progressing to heart failure. With early detection and treatment, heart function recovers to normal in \>80% of patients. Unfortunately, heart failure medications are associated with an undesirable long-term pill burden, financial costs, and side-effects (e.g., dizziness and fatigue). As a result, cancer survivors frequently ask if they can safely stop their heart failure medications once their heart function has returned to normal. Currently there is no scientific evidence in this area of Cardio-Oncology. To address this knowledge gap, the investigators have designed a randomized control trial to assess the safety of stopping heart failure medication in patients with CTRCD and recovered heart function. The investigators will enrol patients who have completed their cancer therapy and are on heart medications for their CTRCD, which has now normalized. The investigators will randomize patients with no other reasons to continue heart failure medications (e.g., kidney disease) to continuing or stopping their heart medications safely. All patients will undergo a cardiac MRI at baseline, 1 and 5 years with safety assessments at 6-8 weeks, 6 months and 3 and 5 years. The investigators will determine if stopping medications is non-inferior to continuing medications by counting the numbers of patients who develop heart dysfunction by 1 year in each group.

Stage II-IIIa Urothelial Cancer Randomizing Pre-operative Nivolumab With or Without Relatlimab

This is a non-blinded phase 2 trial in Stage II-IIIa urothelial cancer randomizing pre-operative nivolumab with or without relatlimab to assess whether bladder preservation after dual immunotherapy would be a viable treatment option for patients responding to treatment

Immune Checkpoint Inhibitors Nephrotoxicity

In recent years, immunotherapy has been postulated as one of the most effective strategy in the fight against cancer. The greatest success in this field has been achieved through the inhibition of molecules involved in the brake of the adaptive immune response. The compounds capable of blocking the action of these molecules constitute the "immune checkpoint inhibitors" (ICI). Despite its efficacy, the treatment with ICI causes adverse effects, and in the case of kidney damage, the prognosis has been shown to worsen in cancer patients who develop renal dysfunction. Currently, the diagnosis based on laboratory tests is insufficient to predict the underlying kidney injury and identify the type of damage. The hypothesis proposed that the renal lesion could be subclinical, and therefore the possibility of using new urinary biomarkers could be a useful diagnostic tool that would allow these patients to be managed in a preventive (risk markers) and early way (early markers), and even to elucidate if renal damage is due to this therapy or to other factors (differential diagnostic markers). To develop this hypothesis it is proposed to validate biomarkers in patients treated with ICI by developing a prospective study. The diagnostic products derived from this study will improve the clinical practice of cancer treatment with ICI, and therefore the expectancy and quality of life of patients.