Pancreatic Neuroendocrine Tumour - Optimal Surgical Debulking or Not (PANTODON)

Uppsala University

Status: Enrolling

Conditions: Pancreatic Neuroendocrine Tumor

Treatments: Procedure: Debulking surgery

Study type: Interventional

Funder types: Other

Identifiers

NCT07273409

PANTODON/2025

Details and patient eligibility

About

Pancreatic neuroendocrine tumours (pan-NETs) are neoplasms arising from the endocrine cells of the pancreas. Although pan-NET are quite rare, the incidence is on the rise and together with other abdominal neuroendocrine tumours an approximate incidence in Sweden would be 850 patients per year extrapolating from Norwegian data. Pan-NET are divided into symptomatic hormone producing tumours (such as insulinomas/glucagonomas/VIPomas) or non-functioning tumours that often are asymptomatic. As early symptoms often are lacking in non-functioning-pan-NET, many patients present with distant metastases and are thus beyond a curative surgical approach at the time of diagnosis. Metastatic non-functioning pan-NETs present a significant challenge and the optimal management remains a subject of debate.

This is a prospective, two armed, parallel, randomised, controlled, international multi-centre study, aiming to investigate if a near-total tumour debulking (intervention) in metastatic (stage 4) GI-WHO grade 1-2 pan- NET, with or without oncologic treatment, is superior to oncologic treatment alone (control), with regards to overall survival, health-related quality of life, participant performance status, time until hospitalisation, adverse event characteristics and cost in the short and long term.

Enrollment: 200 estimated patients

Sex: All

Ages: 18+ years old

Volunteers: No Healthy Volunteers

Inclusion criteria

• Pan- NET, ENETS/AJCC stage 4 determined by CT or PET/CT
• Primary tumour or metastases confirmed as Pancreatic NET GI-WHO grade 1-2 pan-NET by histology or cytology
• Age ≥ 18 years
• Written informed consent obtained

Exclusion criteria

• Subject not fit for surgery due to comorbidity or advanced age (reason to be specified)
• Risk of surgery deemed too high by MDT or Surgeon (reason to be specified)
• Previous surgery for pan-NET.
• Hormonal symptoms caused by a functional pan-NET, not controllable by medical therapy, indicating debulking surgery.
• Previously included in the current study.
• Pregnancy
• The study subject does not fit into either STRATA: a) STRATUM 1: Less than 70% of the total tumour volume can be debulked, b) STRATUM 2: no FDG-PET avid disease is observed OR all (100%) FDG-PET avid tumour is not resectable.
• Other reason in the opinion of the Principal Investigator (reason to be specified).

Trial design

Primary purpose: Treatment

Allocation: Randomized

Interventional model: Parallel Assignment

Masking: None (Open label)

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200 participants in 2 patient groups

Surgical group

Experimental group

Description:

Debulking surgery followed by oncologic treatment according to standard routine. Further debulking surgery or ablation may be continued during follow-up to reduce tumour load.

Treatment:

Procedure: Debulking surgery

Non-surgical group

No Intervention group

Description:

Oncologic treatment alone. No surgical or thermal ablative treatments will be planned after randomisation. Any surgical or ablative procedure for pan-NET that is performed after randomisation in the Non-surgical group is considered as a protocol deviation. However, such procedures may be carried out if clinically indicated and no other equivalent or better oncological options for treatment are available. The surgery is then documented as oncological treatment in eCRF and the subject will continue follow-up in the study.