ReviewCancers2022
Tumour Burden Reporting in Phase III Clinical Trials of Metastatic Lung, Breast, and Colorectal Cancers: A Systematic Review.
Review in Cancers, 2022. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 6 papers, 1 of them a synthesis that pooled it.
What it found
Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.
The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.
Who cites it
6 citing papers in PubMed, 1 synthesis or guideline pooled it, 7 citations in OpenAlex.
- Global trends, risk factors, and therapeutic associations of fungal pulmonary infections in lung cancer: A systematic review and meta-analysis.Jornal brasileiro de pneumologia : publicacao oficial da Sociedade Brasileira de Pneumologia e Tisilogia · 2025Pooled it
- Article
- Shared blood gene signature in lung adenocarcinoma and microbial lung infections: a bioinformatic analysis and in silico validation.Discover oncology · 2025Article
- Patterns of metastatic spread and tumor burden in unselected cancer patients using PET imaging: Implications for the oligometastatic spectrum theory.Clinical and translational radiation oncology · 2024Article
- Oligo-metastatic neoPlasms from the gastro-intestinal tract: iDentIfiCaTIon of cliNical and molecular drivers: the PREDICTION study.BMC cancer · 2023Article
- Oligo-Metastatic Cancers: Putative Biomarkers, Emerging Challenges and New Perspectives.Cancers · 2023Review
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
9 authors at 2 institutions in 1 country.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
backgroundRandomised phase III clinical trials represent a methodological milestone to select effective drugs against metastatic cancers. In this context, and particularly in the efficacy assessment of biologic drugs, the initial metastatic tumour burden is a strong prognostic factor.
methodsA systematic literature review of randomised, phase III, first-line, clinical trials in metastatic breast, colorectal, and lung cancers, published from 2016 to 2021, was performed. Three groups of variables were collected: identity-, method- (including tumour burden assessment) and outcome-related.
resultsSeventy trials were selected. A large portion of studies (41.4%) focused on the effects of biologic agents (signal inhibitors and immuno-therapies). A definition of low-burden disease based predominantly on the number of involved organs was reported in 28.6% of studies. No explicit reference to oligo-metastatic disease was found either in inclusion/exclusion criteria or in final descriptive data analyses. Disease extent, heterogeneously defined, was a stratification factor for randomisation in only 25.7% of studies. In two studies, a significant imbalance between arms in patients with low-burden disease was revealed.
conclusionsAttention to initial tumour burden in designing future clinical trials (including the harmonisation of definitions and the reporting of eventual oligo-metastatic disease, complete estimates of tumour volume, and its consideration as a stratification factor) should be increased.
Indexed as
Identifiers
What OpenQuestion holds
Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.