Overview
- Penn Medicine’s randomized Phase II CLEVER trial, published in Nature Medicine, enrolled 51 breast cancer survivors with dormant tumor cells detected in bone marrow.
- Treatment cleared minimal residual disease in about 80% of participants, with only two recurrences after a median 42 months of follow-up.
- Three-year recurrence-free survival exceeded 90% with one drug and reached 100% with the two-drug combination.
- The regimen used FDA-approved medicines that act on autophagy and mTOR pathways, reflecting biology distinct from actively growing tumors.
- Investigators have begun enrolling larger Phase II studies, ABBY and PALAVY, to validate efficacy and generalizability across more patients.