New Phase 1 METTSEO Clinical Trial For Newly Diagnosed And Widely Metastatic Ewing Sarcoma
The METTSEO trial is a new Phase 1 clinical study sponsored by the Moffitt Cancer Center for patients newly diagnosed with widely metastatic Ewing sarcoma. Traditional treatments typically rely on repeating the same alternating chemotherapy drugs over many months, which often allows aggressive cancer cells to adapt, mutate, and become resistant to the medication. Inspired by evolutionary biology, METTSEO completely flips this script. Instead of using a predictable routine, this protocol aims to drive cancer cells to extinction by rapidly and constantly switching the types of treatments used, never giving the tumor time to figure out how to survive.
The treatment is broken down into three distinct, aggressive phases spread over two years to stay ahead of the cancer. It begins with an intensive eight-week “first strike” using standard chemotherapy to rapidly shrink the bulk of the tumor. Immediately after, patients enter a 30-week phase of “second strikes,” which constantly rotates through five different drug combinations and radiation to wipe out remaining cells before they can mutate. Finally, the protocol concludes with over a year of alternating maintenance chemotherapy blocks designed to destroy any hidden, dormant cancer cells and prevent the disease from returning.
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