Lanreotide Combined With Telotristat Ethyl or Placebo for the First-line Treatment in Patients With Advanced Well Differentiated Small Intestinal Neuroendocrine Tumours (siNET) With Highly-functioning Carcinoid Syndrome

Plain-language summary

This is a randomized phase III clinical trial of Lanreotide combined with Telotristat ethyl or placebo for the first-line treatment in patients with advanced well differentiated small intestinal neuroendocrine tumours (siNET) with highly-functioning carcinoid syndrome to test whether telotristat ethyl plus lanreotide is more effective than placebo plus lanreotide in reducing the number of daily bowel movements. In addition, the study allows evaluation of the biochemical response (5-HIAA and chromogranin-A), the reduction in the number of daily cutaneous flushing episodes, the improvement in abdominal pain/discomfort, health-related quality of life, improvement in gastro-intestinal and endocrine symptoms, changes in emotional functioning, the impact of discontinuation of telotristat ethyl/placebo on HRQOL and symptoms, and the safety and toxicity of the treatment. Patients will enter into a screening/run-in period of 1 week to establish baseline characteristics and symptomatology. The baseline assessment of daily bowel movement, as assessed in an electronic diary, will be averaged over the run-in period. Following the screening/run-in period, patients will be randomly assigned (1:1) to either the control arm or the experimental arm for 12 months. Randomization will be stratified according to the grade of tumour differentiation (grade 1 vs. grade 2) and by baseline number of bowel movements per day (4-6 versus \>6). A total of 94 patients will be randomly assigned (1:1) to either arm. Upon randomization, all patients will enter the 12-month treatment period with lanreotide + telotristat ethyl/placebo (blinded). In the experimental arm, patients will receive the deep subcutaneous injection of lanreotide (120 mg) every 28 days and 250 mg orally three times daily (TID) of telotristat ethyl for 12 months. In the control arm, patients will receive the deep subcutaneous injection of lanreotide every 28 days (120 mg) and placebo orally TID for 12 months. After completion of a minimum of 6 months on randomized blinded-treatment, the protocol allows for patients on treatment with telotristat ethyl/placebo to be unblinded in the event of "lack of symptom control". Unblinding due to "lack of symptom control" can happen at any time between 6 and 12 months of the blinded-treatment period. After unblinding, patient will interrupt protocol treatment and will be further treated as per clinician discretion. All patients will be unblinded after a maximum of 12 months on randomized blinded-treatment. After a follow-up of 12 months, patients will go off study except patients with carcinoid heart disease. Patients off study will be further treated as per clinician discretion. Patients with carcinoid heart disease will continue open-label treatment on study (lanreotide + telotristat ethyl or lanreotide alone according to what they were receiving at unblinding at 12 months) for 4 additional years (open-label extension period). Patients with carcinoid heart disease who discontinue protocol treatment before 12 months will also enter the extension period for additional follow-up. Additional follow-up will last 4 years for these patients and will include 6-monthly cardiological assessments. All efficacy analyses will be conducted in the Intention-to-treat population as primary analyses i.e. all 94 randomized patients will be analyzed in the arm they were allocated by randomization. Safety analyses will be performed on the Safety population i.e. on all patients who have received at least one dose of the study drugs. The translational research projects include blood metabolite discovery and targeted assays to find new biomarker candidates of response to Telotristat. Human biological material that will be collected for translational research purpose: * whole blood, plasma and serum at baseline, 4 hours after first dose, 4 weeks, 12 weeks and at end of treatment visit with telotristat/placebo (due to end of study, disease progression or lack of benefit) * archival tissue samples (formalin-fixed paraffin-embedded) will be retrieved for all patients at study entry. In addition, one EDTA blood tube of whole blood (10 ml) at baseline, 12 weeks and end of treatment (EOT visit) might be also collected for not yet pre-defined and further translational research. Quality of life will be assessed with the EORTC Quality of Life Questionnaire (QLQ-C30) version 3, together with the QLQ-GI.NET21 specific module designed for Neuroendocrine Tumours. The computer-adaptive testing (CAT) diarrhea scale will also be used. The baseline questionnaires must be completed during the screening period and before randomization. Subsequent questionnaires are completed at 4 weeks, 12 weeks, 24 weeks, 36 weeks and 52 weeks. Once a patient has stopped treatment, HRQoL data collection for that patient is required 1 month (28-35 days) after protocol treatment discontinuation.

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