Xentuzumab

The WINGMEN trial aims to understand how a hormone-like protein called insulin-like growth factor (IGF) helps prostate cancers grow and become aggressive. IGF is required for normal development, and also helps cancers grow and spread. Men with high blood IGF are at increased risk of developing prostate cancer, and tall men are more likely to get aggressive prostate cancer. The WINGMEN trial will recruit 30 men with prostate cancer who have been offered an operation to remove the prostate. Most men have to wait 4-5 weeks between a decision to have prostate removal surgery, and actually having the operation. In this 4-5 week window we will offer treatment with a new IGF-blocker drug called xentuzumab. The drug is provided by Boehringer Ingelheim and the trial is funded by Prostate Cancer UK.
Xentuzumab will be given as an outpatient by once weekly intravenous infusion (drip) in the Early Phase Clinical Trials Unit, Oxford Cancer Centre, Churchill Hospital. In other trials, xentuzumab is being tested in patients with advanced cancer, and is proving to be well-tolerated. After the 4-week treatment, WINGMEN trial patients will have routine prostate removal surgery. Samples of blood and prostate cancer that are surplus to diagnostic need will be taken from the diagnostic prostate biopsy (pre-xentuzumab) and the cancer removed at surgery (after xentuzumab) for research tests. These samples will be compared to measure how effectively xentuzumab reduces signs of tumour growth, and identify which genes and proteins are switched on or off by xentuzumab, and which may therefore be important in helping IGF promote prostate cancer growth. The information we get from the WINGMEN trial may help us to improve treatment of men with prostate cancer, with the long-term aim of reducing the risk of aggressive prostate cancer