Basal-like PDAC Treated With Gemcitabine, Erlotinib, and Nab-paclitaxel

This study explores the best dose of the combination treatment for subjects with advanced unresectable or metastatic basal-like subtype pancreatic adenocarcinoma. For that reason, the safety, efficacy, and tolerability, as well as preliminary estimates of anti-tumor effects of low-dose epidermal growth factor receptor EGFR inhibitors in combination with bi-weekly gemcitabine/nab-paclitaxel (GnP) will be examined in subjects with advanced basal-like pancreatic adenocarcinoma. The Purity Independent Subtyping of Tumors (PurIST) will determine the type of cancer either "basal type" or "classical". If cancer subtype-based first-line chemotherapy in combination with erlotinib will be safe and tolerable in subjects with advanced unresectable or metastatic pancreatic adenocarcinoma of the basal-like subtype as defined by PurIST, as well as provide a preliminary assessment of treatment response in basal-like subjects. This study will also follow a subset of subjects with classical subtypes that are treated per standard of care on oxaliplatin-based triplet chemotherapy.

The standard of care chemotherapy for first-line advanced pancreatic adenocarcinoma is FOLFIRINOX, NALIRIFOX, or gemcitabine/nab-paclitaxel. However, multiple studies suggest that basal-like subtypes of pancreatic adenocarcinoma do not respond to FOLFIRINOX. Based upon existing retrospective analyses, the addition of epidermal growth factor receptor (EGFR) inhibitors such as erlotinib to gemcitabine and nab-paclitaxel suggest improved rates of response in subjects with basal-like pancreatic adenocarcinoma compared to FOLFIRINOX. Subjects with a classical subtype will be treated on standard-of-care oxaliplatin-based triplet chemotherapy. Subjects with basal type will receive the erlotinib combination treatment. The purpose of this study is to find out the best dose of the erlotinib combination treatment. The erlotinib combination treatment is not FDA-approved. However, the combinations of erlotinib, gemcitabine, and nab-paclitaxel are both approved by the FDA for the treatment of pancreatic cancer. The standard of care treatments are both FDA-approved. All three drugs have been used in combination before in other clinical trials and a certain amount of safety data exists. In the basal-like arm of this study, a two-stage utility of bayesian optimal interval ( U-BOIN) design will be used to evaluate the range of safe and admissible doses in Stage 1 and the optimal best dose (OBD) in Stage 2 basal subjects. After the determination of the OBD, an expansion cohort will be enrolled to obtain additional precision of the overall response rate (ORR). In total, 52 patients will be enrolled in the basal-like arm. Separately, 52 patients with "classical" tumors will be enrolled in a parallel arm and given standard-of-care oxaliplatin-based triplet chemotherapy (FOLFIRINOX or NALIRIFOX) to determine long-term outcomes including overall survival, objective response rate, and progression-free survival. This is to test the safety and effectiveness (how well a treatment works) of both treatments, depending on the cancer type.