Patients receive nivolumab and ipilimumab. Nivolumab 3 mg/kg will be given on Day 1 ( 3 days) of each 28-day treatment cycle. Ipilimumab 1 mg/kg will be given only on day 1 in cycle
- Nivolumab will be administered as an IV infusion over 30 ( 5) minutes and then, after a 30 minutes rest period, ipilimumab will be administered as an IV infusion over 30 ( 5) minutes.
Pre-medication for chemotherapy (based on standard-of-care and local institutional standards) and chemotherapy will then be administered after a further 30 minutes rest period. The recommended dose of nab-paclitaxel is 100 mg/m2 administered as an IV infusion over 30 to 40 minutes on Days 1, 8, and 15 of each 28-day cycle. Gemcitabine 800 mg/m2 will be adminestered over 30 to 40 minutes immediately after nab-paclitaxel on Days 1, 8, and 15 of each 28-day cycle.
At the beginning of cycle 3, patients also undergo concurrent MRI-guided adaptive SBRT (8 Gy x 3 fractions) delivered by ViewRay MR-Linear Accelerator.
Cycles repeats every 4 weeks for 4 courses (16 weeks) in the absence of disease progression, unacceptable toxicity, withdrawal of consent, or study closure.
Once 4 cycles of study treatment have been completed, subjects without disease progression or unacceptable toxicity may continue as per Investigator's Choice to either:
- Continuation of treatment with nivolumab, nab-paclitaxel and gemcitabine or surgery. Nivolumab can be continued until progressive disease (PD), unacceptable toxicity, withdrawal of consent, or up to 12 cycles in total. Patients will receive chemotherapy until PD, unacceptable toxicity or withdrawal of consent, according to investigator's judgment
- If tumor response allows for surgical intervention, the subject will be eligible for that treatment as deemed appropriate by the investigators. Surgical intervention may not occur prior to completing the planned 4 cycles of nivolumab, nab-paclitaxel, gemcitabine and SBRT regardless the patient demonstrates a major response to therapy. Patients after PC resection will receive treatment until recurrence, unacceptable toxicity, withdrawal of consent, clear clinical deterioration, or for a maximum of 6 cycles, according to investigator's judgment Patients who discontinue without PD (stable disease (SD), partial response (PR), or complete response (CR)) will have both the safety follow-up period and survival follow-up period to occur simultaneously during the 2-year follow-up period. The duration of this follow-up is up to 2 years following the last dose of study treatment, although a longer follow-up period could be considered in selected cases if an efficacy signal is apparent. Patients will receive follow-up CT/MRI scans every 2 months (14 days) until documented progression of disease, withdrawal of consent from active participation in the study, lost to follow-up, or for at least 2 years after start of treatment, whichever is earliest. Tumor evaluations will be assessed by the investigators and response to be determined according to response evaluation criteria in solid tumors (RECIST) v1.1 guidelines. Tumor assessment scans, for participants who have ongoing clinical benefit beyond the 2-year period from start of treatment, may continue to be collected as part of standard-of-care treatment. Subsequent therapies will also be recorded in this survival follow-up period.
All subjects who discontinue treatment for any reason will have a safety follow-up visit about 30, 60 and 100 days after treatment discontinuation and will be followed for OS and post-study anticancer therapies approximately every 90 days by phone or review of medical records until death, withdrawal of consent, or lost to follow-up.
To minimize the risks of adding or nivolumab + ipilimumab followed by nivolumab and chemo-radiation, safety will be monitored by a Bayesian stopping rule for the rate of treatment-related AEs leading to discontinuation greater than 30% (summarized baseline toxicity rate). For example, if 3 patients out of the first 6 or 4 out of the first 7 evaluable patients experience treatment-related AEs leading to discontinuation, accrual to the trial will be temporarily suspended and the principle investigator and study team will review the toxicity data and recommend either modification or termination of the trial.
