In this episode of the IJGC podcast, Editor-in-Chief Dr. Pedro Ramirez, is joined by Drs. Brian M. Slomovitz and David M. Gershenson to discuss Ribociclib Plus Letrozole in Recurrent Low-Grade Serous Carcinoma of the Ovary: GOG 3026.
Dr. Slomovitz is a Gynecologic Oncologist at Mount Sinai Medical Center in Miami Beach, Florida, and Professor of Obstetrics and Gynecology at the Wertheim College of Medicine at Florida International University. He is an internationally recognized leader in gynecologic oncology clinical trials, specifically in immunotherapy and novel biomarker therapeutics. He also is a leader in sentinel lymph node detection for gynecologic malignancies.
Dr. David M. Gershenson have been engaged in several aspects of clinical and translational research of rare ovarian cancers. In the 1980s, his focus was primarily on improving therapies for patients with malignant ovarian germ cell tumors and ovarian sex cord-stromal tumors. Since the late 1980s, his research has concentrated on women with serous borderline tumors and low-grade serous ovarian cancer. In collaboration with Dr. Elvio Silva, they described the clinical course of women with serous borderline tumors and peritoneal implants, some of whom subsequently developed low-grade serous ovarian cancer. In 2004, he was part of the MD Anderson team who transformed the field by defining the binary histologic grading system for serous carcinoma, subsequently adopted by the World Health Organization. Several observational cohort studies of low-grade serous carcinoma followed, documenting the indolent nature of this rare subtype reflected in its prolonged overall survival, its relative insensitivity to chemotherapy, the efficacy of endocrine therapy in multiple clinical settings, the role of neoadjuvant therapy, the role of secondary cytoreductive surgery, the efficacy of bevacizumab, and the identification of the MAP kinase signaling pathway’s role in its pathogenesis. During that period, he was also chairing the Gynecologic Oncology Group’s Rare Tumor Committee (2005-2018), which was developing clinical trials specifically for rare ovarian cancers, including low-grade serous carcinoma. Much of this work culminated in the publication of GOG 281/LOGS, a positive randomized phase 3 clinical trials of the MEK inhibitor, trametinib, compared to physician’s choice standard of care, published in The Lancet in 2022. Additional seminal publications in 2022 included identifying mutations in the MAP kinase signaling pathway as a major prognostic factor and providing preliminary evidence that treatment with contemporary postoperative therapy may be reducing relapse rates. Finally, he is the Co-Principal Investigator of two important clinical trials to define the optimal primary adjuvant therapy (NRG-GY-019) and to determine the efficacy of letrozole plus ribociclib in women with recurrent low-grade serous carcinoma (GOG 3026).
