Gestational trophoblastic tumour research

All treatments have to be fully researched before they can be adopted as standard treatment for everyone. This is so that

• We can be sure they work
• We can be sure they work better than the treatments that are available at the moment
• They are known to be safe

Firstly, treatments are developed and tested in laboratories. For ethical and safety reasons, experimental treatments must be tested in the laboratory before they can be tried in patients. If a treatment described here is said to be at the laboratory stage of research, it is not ready for patients and is not available either within or outside the NHS.

Tests in patients are called clinical trials. The trials and research section has information about what trials are, including details about the 4 phases of clinical trials.  If you are interested in taking part in a trial, visit our searchable database of clinical trials.  If you are interested in a particular trial, print the information off and take it to your own specialist.  If the trial is suitable for you, your doctor will need to make the referral to the research team.

All the new approaches covered here are the subject of ongoing research. Until studies are completed and new effective treatments are found, these potential new treatments aren’t part of standard therapy for GTT.

Doctors want to find out more about why GTT develops. In most women who have a molar pregnancy there is no known cause. In women who have had several molar pregnancies, researchers are looking to see if there is any genetic reason for this.

Doctors diagnose and follow up women with GTT by checking the level of hCG in their blood and urine. We already know that the hCG for women with GTT is different to that produced in a normal pregnancy. Recently, researchers have started to look for even more subtle differences in hCG to help them know which women are most likely to need treatment.

Treatment for GTT is very successful and more than 98% of women with these conditions are cured. But doctors are looking into different combinations of chemotherapy drugs and new types of chemotherapy for GTT that comes back after treatment or doesn't respond to treatment.

Newer drugs being investigated include pemetrexed (Alimta). Researchers in America have tried pemetrexed in women whose first chemotherapy did not completely get rid of the disease (persistent disease), and in women whose disease has come back (recurrent disease). The trial started in July 2005 and ended in 2008. But it will be a number of years before the results are available to tell whether pemetrexed is any better than the treatment we use at the moment.