MATTERHORN Trial Findings Signal Paradigm Shift in Early Gastric Cancer Care

In a recent video interview with Applied Clinical Trials, Nancy Ghattas, VP, US Oncology Commercial Franchise Head of Immuno-Oncology, AstraZeneca, discussed the significance of the Phase III MATTERHORN trial (NCT04592913) results for patients with early-stage or locally advanced gastric and gastroesophageal junction (GEJ) cancers. She highlighted how the Imfinzi-based perioperative regimen demonstrated a 22% reduction in the risk of death and improved overall survival regardless of PD-L1 status, marking the first immunotherapy in this setting to show such benefit. Ghattas emphasized the trial’s potential to establish a new standard of care in gastric and GEJ cancers and reflected on how these findings align with AstraZeneca’s broader immuno-oncology strategy to bring curative-intent treatments to patients earlier in their cancer journey.

The below interview transcript was lightly edited for clarity.

ACT: This is the first perioperative immunotherapy regimen to demonstrate an OS benefit in this population. What are the potential implications for shifting the standard of care in gastric and GEJ cancers?

Ghattas: For the last 20 years, as I mentioned, there’s been no major advancement in this space beyond surgery and chemotherapy—and that has been associated with poor prognosis as well. Patients tend to relapse within the first two years, and only about one out of four survive beyond five years. So there has been a huge unmet need.

Now, with the MATTERHORN data, we’ve seen that when we start with Imfinzi—or an IO—in a perioperative setting, which basically means adding immunotherapy to chemotherapy before and after surgery, with maintenance immunotherapy afterward, we are seeing a meaningful change: an overall survival benefit of 22%.

This represents a paradigm shift—an advancement that we expect will become the new standard of care for early gastric cancer and early gastroesophageal cancers.