A cancer survivor is welcoming a new clinical trial that could improve long-term outcomes for people with cervical cancer.
Sonia Dancer, from Fair Oak in Hampshire, is now in remission after being diagnosed with cervical cancer in 2019.
Ahead of World Cancer Day (4th February), the mum-of-two is supporting CRAIN – a clinical trial funded by Cancer Research UK.
The trial is being run by Southampton Clinical Trials Unit (CTU). It is due to open soon at University Hospital Southampton (UHS).
Sonia's story
Sonia had already lost her mother to breast cancer and her father to thyroid cancer when she began to experience symptoms of cervical cancer.
“I’d had a lot of pain-free bleeding for about 9 months which I’d originally put down to having my coil changed or thought it could just be irregular periods,” said Sonia.
“It was easy to write it off as something else but deep down I knew it was something more, so I went to get checked by my GP who referred me.
“When I was told it was cancer on December 16th, 2019, my children were just six and nine years-old and they’d just lost both their grandparents. All they knew was that cancer killed people.
“But my husband and I were honest about it all and explained everything about my treatment so that they didn’t hear snippets of conversations and think something awful was going to happen to me.
“I was offered 25 sessions of radiotherapy which I had for five weeks. Every Wednesday I had chemotherapy alongside it. It was all-consuming and very tiring and on the third week of my chemo I had an allergic reaction to it. After five weeks of chemo, I had sessions of brachytherapy. I did also have some surgery to remove some cancerous cells in other parts of my body.”
Sonia has been in remission for over a year and has gone from three monthly scans to four monthly scans. But she says she is still experiencing the side-effects of her treatment.
“I’ve gone through the early menopause and I do get quite bad hips which are really stiff and I can’t stand up straight away. I’ve also experienced lots of scar tissue from the radiation which I have had to have removed but it continues to grow and can be quite problematic.
“I have been given exercises to do to try to help with it but new treatments that could reduce those side effects and make the treatment easier would be really beneficial. Any treatment that can help people get better, quicker is welcome.”
Finding new treatments
Sonia has now joined the team at Southampton CTU as a patient ambassador on the CRAIN trial.
The researchers will add a new drug, tolinapant, to the standard treatment for cervical cancer. They want to find out if it can help destroy cancerous cells and improve patient outcomes.
The trial is led in Southampton by Dr Vicky McFarlane, a Consultant Clinical Oncologist at UHS. She specialises in gynaecological cancers.
“We currently treat most cases of locally advanced cervical cancer by giving people chemotherapy and radiotherapy at the same time,” says Dr McFarlane.
“But unfortunately, many patients will suffer long-term side effects from the treatment. Some will also see their disease come back.
"We need to find new treatments that can eradicate the cancer more effectively and see fewer patients relapsing.”
Cancer cells can avoid a process called apoptosis. This is a type of cell death that is part of all normal cells in the body and ensures that damaged or old cells are removed.
In cancerous cells, the mechanism that causes apoptosis is switched off. This means the cells can grow uncontrollably, causing a tumour.
Tolinapant causes apoptosis in cells, so researchers believe it could be a good addition to standard treatment.
Marina Lee, CRAIN trial manager at Southampton CTU, explained:
“Studies in the laboratory have shown that adding this drug to chemoradiotherapy can increase the number of cancer cells that are destroyed, compared to radiation alone.
“This early phase clinical trial will help us to find a suitable dose of tolinapant that can be safely tolerated by patients and understand if it is effective against cancer.”
Making progress
Around 3,200 people are diagnosed with cervical cancer in the UK each year. That’s nearly nine new cases each day.
“People tend to think ‘cancer will never happen to me’ and you generally don’t think too much about it until you’re in that situation,” said Sonia.
“If there are new drugs to try for people who are in the position I was once in, that’s great news. But it’s so important that people donate to help fund research and trials like this so that progress can keep being made.”
The CRAIN trial aims to recruit 42 patients at six hospitals around the UK over the next two years. It recently opened at The Christie in Manchester and is due to begin at UHS in the coming weeks.
Dr Karen Underwood, Director of Research & Development at UHS, said:
"Clinical research has a vital role to play in improving current treatments, medicines and care, and developing new and better ones.
"I am delighted that we are opening CRAIN in Southampton. The trial will draw upon our world-class research infrastructure and close working between Southampton CTU, the NIHR Southampton Clinical Research Facility, and the CRUK Southampton Experimental Cancer Medicine Centre.”
Dr McFarlane added: “If this first trial is successful, the hope is that it will lead to a larger trial where we can test the addition of tolinapant to our current treatment.
“We hope that with this research we can improve outcomes and survival rates for people with cervical cancer.”
The trial is being funded by nearly £700,000 of funding from Cancer Research UK. It is supported by ASTEX Pharmaceuticals, who manufacture tolinapant and are providing the drug for the trial.
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