MONTREAL, January 26, 2022 – The CanVECTOR Clinical Trials & Shared Platforms platform recently held its 2021 Pilot Trials Funding Competition, and following an independent review process we are pleased to announce that we've awarded principal investigator Luke Lavallée, MDCM, MSc, FRCSC - University of Ottawa, and co-principal investigator Marc Carrier, MD, MSc, FRCPC - University of Ottawa a $98,000 (CAD) Pilot Trial award for the the study titled Thromboprophylaxis during systemic therapy for genitourinary cancer (VTE-GU)!
About the VTE-GU Pilot Trial
Despite the success of the AVERT and CASSINI trials, oncologists in Canada are not routinely
recommending thromboprophylaxis to genitourinary (GU) cancer patients because the generalizability of results to the GU population is unknown. The VTE-GU Pilot Trial aims to evaluate the feasibility of conducting a large randomized trial in patients with genitourinary (GU) cancers initiating systemic therapy.
Patients will be randomized at four Canadian centers to thromboprophylaxis using rivaroxaban 10 mg daily or placebo to prevent venous thromboembolism (VTE) in this randomized, double-blind clinical trial. Safety will be assessed by reporting major bleeding. The primary outcome of the Pilot Trial will be the number of patients enrolled per month. The Full Trial will be considered feasible if an average of ≥ 2 patients/site are enrolled per month.
Research Team
Led by a surgical oncologist (Luke Lavallée) as well as a thrombosis expert / principal investigator of the AVERT trial (Marc Carrier), the study will consist of a multi-disciplinary research team of cancer surgeons, medical oncologists, thrombosis experts, and epidemiologists. The Ottawa Hospital will be the main study site. Collaborators in oncology and thrombosis from McMaster University, Western University, and University of Toronto within the CanVECTOR network have agreed to participate in the pilot trial.
Co-investigators involved in the pilot trial include, but are not limited, to Dean Fergusson, MHA, PhD; Rodney Breau, MD, MSc; Dominique Bosse, MD, MSc, MPH; Kristen McAlpine, MD; Tzu-Fei Wang, MD, MPH; Rick Ikesaka, MD, MSc; Aly Khan Lalani, MD; and Ranjeeta Mallick, MSc, MSc, PhD.
CanVECTOR thanks all applicants for their applications.
About the Pilot Trials Funding Competition
The Pilot Trials Funding Competition is an annual CanVECTOR funding competition aiming to build research capacity related to VTE and to enable CanVECTOR scientists to collect pilot data that will inform the conduct of larger multicentre clinical trials and increase the ability to attract external peer-reviewed funding.