Transcript

My name is Dr Claire Verschraegen. I'm a professor at the Ohio State Comprehensive Cancer Center. I'm the chief of the medical oncology division. My specialty is really rare tumors and drug development.

Thank you very much for asking me to discuss a couple of abstracts that were presented at ASCO. ASCO was really a different type of meeting this year, with a video meeting. It's not really the same as what I was used to for the many years that I went to the ASCO meeting.

I was asked to discuss a couple of abstracts on the very rare, kind of quasi-benign condition called TGCT (also known as pigmented villonodular synovitis).

The second abstract was really looking at differences between the United States and the European country on patients that had the condition.

The United States only had 30 patients, but in Europe, they really looked 136 patients. It gives very good information on the epidemiology of these conditions, about age of onset is around early 40s. More women are affected with the condition, the knee is the most common condition, that's the only condition I have treated before. The disease can recur quite often if it's not followed up very closely.

Around about half of the patients will recur, so it needs to be followed up after initial treatment. It's a condition that's not diagnosed immediately, because it's so rare, people don't think about it. It takes about 1 year to 1 year and a half to diagnose the condition.

Main treatment, especially in the United States, was surgery. Then about 15% to 30% of the patient ended up taking a tyrosine kinase inhibitor for the condition. In Europe, some people were treated with radiation, not in the United States.

In the European and American patients, they ask patient-reported outcomes, so they could follow the subjective symptoms that the patient had. They really look at the difference between the 2 geographic area in the world.

Stiffness is a problem and reported by, consistently all over the world. Then the quality of life index was rather high and comparable between the world as well. This is a condition that has no geographical difference and should be treated the same worldwide, in my opinion.

So, the first treatment would be a surgical evaluation and resection, if possible. Close follow-up to make sure there is no recurrence in this patient population, and when it becomes unresectable, the use of pexidartinib.

This disease scheme was approved by the FDA relatively recently, and I have not personally used it. I want to make sure that's a disclaimer. That's about it of what I can say for this condition.