Project title ： A proposal to determine the therapeutic gain by induction-concurrent chemoradiation over concurrent-adjuvant chemoradiation and the benefit of adjuvant chemotherapy in NPC patients with residual EBV DNA following primary treatment
Principal investigator ： Dr Anne Lee Wing-mui for Hong Kong Nassopharyngeal Cancer Study Group

Two prospective randomized multi-center studies
 
Nasopharyngeal carcinoma is the 7th commonest cancer in Hong Kong: 944 new cases were detected in 2005. As people at the prime of their life are mostly affected (peak age-specific incidence being 30-70 years), the impact is especially devastating. Recent researches in Hong Kong have shown that chemotherapy in addition to standard radiotherapy improves treatment outcomes, particularly for those patients presented with advanced disease. With these encouraging findings, two randomized studies (0501 and 0502) were initiated in 2005 under the sponsorship by the Hong Kong Anti-Cancer Society. The purposes of these studies are to determine the optimal way of delivering chemotherapy and radiotherapy; and whether additional chemotherapy could help those patients who fail to achieve normalization of EBV DNA level after initial treatment. All six oncology centers in Hong Kong are actively participating in these studies; with additional contribution from Sun Yat-sen Cancer center at GuangZhou. Recruitment to these studies is still ongoing and about 260 patients have been successfully randomized in 0501 trial; and another 25 patients in 0502 trial. We expect that enrollment would be completed by the end of 2013 and interim analyses are currently underway.