Trial reportNature medicine2026
Pembrolizumab and olaparib in homologous-recombination-deficient metastatic pancreatic cancer: the phase 2 POLAR trial.
Trial report in Nature medicine, 2026. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. It is linked to trial NCT04666740 (A Phase 2 Trial to Evaluate the Safety and Antitumor Activity of Pembrolizumab and OLApaRib), which is not on this map. Cited by 11 papers.
What it found
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The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
A Phase 2 Trial to Evaluate the Safety and Antitumor Activity of Pembrolizumab and OLApaRib (POLAR) Maintenance for Patients With Metastatic Pancreatic Ductal Adenocarcinoma and Homologous Recombination Deficiency and/or Exceptional Treatment Response to Platinum-Based Therapy
Who cites it
11 citing papers in PubMed.
- The dual immune landscape of homologous recombination-deficient tumors: mechanisms and therapeutic implications.Cancer metastasis reviews · 2026Review
- Review
- Prognostic, Predictive, and Clinical Relevance of DNA Damage Repair Alterations in Biliary Tract Cancers.Cancers · 2026Review
- Precision Medicine in Pancreatic Cancer: Targeting KRAS and Beyond.Targeted oncology · 2026Review
- Current advances in immunotherapy for KRAS-Mutant pancreatic cancer.Clinical and experimental medicine · 2026Review
- Genomic Biomarkers for First-Line Treatment Selection in Metastatic Pancreatic Ductal Adenocarcinoma: A Narrative Review.Cancers · 2026Review
- Anatomical dynamics define cancer cachexia subtypes and identify systemic inflammation as a marker of lethal wasting.medRxiv : the preprint server for health sciences · 2026Article
- Rethinking PDAC: from immunological silence to therapeutic opportunity.Frontiers in immunology · 2026Review
- Growth factor supportive care for chemotherapy-induced neutropenia suppresses antitumour immunity in checkpoint blockade-responsive pancreatic cancer.Immunotherapy advances · 2026Article
- PARP inhibitors across different malignancies: clinical applications, resistance mechanisms, and strategies to enhance efficacy through combination therapies.Frontiers in cell and developmental biology · 2026Review
- Malignant reninoma with pulmonary metastasis and ATRX mutation treated with olaparib: a case report of specialized treatment.Frontiers in immunology · 2026Article
Corrections and comments
- Update of
Authors and funding
66 authors.
Funding
Abstract
Homologous recombination deficiency (HRD) arising from BRCA1or BRCA2 or PALB2 mutations confers sensitivity to platinum chemotherapy and PARP inhibition in pancreatic cancer (PC) and may enable prolonged disease control with immune checkpoint blockade (ICB). The phase 2 POLAR trial evaluated maintenance pembrolizumab plus olaparib following platinum-based chemotherapy in biomarker-stratified metastatic PC. Sixty-three participants were enrolled into three cohorts: cohort A (BRCA1/BRCA2-mutated or PALB2-mutated HRD, n = 33), cohort B (non-core HRD, n = 15) and cohort C (platinum sensitive, HRD-wild type, n = 15). Cohort A used a two-stage design with co-primary endpoints of at least 43% Response Evaluation Criteria in Solid Tumors (RECIST) objective response rate (ORR) and at least 77% 6-month progression-free survival (PFS) rate. Among RECIST-evaluable participants in cohort A (n = 20), ORR was 35% (95% confidence interval (CI): 15-59%), whereas 6-month PFS rate in the full cohort (n = 33) was 64% (95% CI: 49-82%), not meeting the primary endpoint. At a median follow-up of 37 months (95% CI: 27-47), median PFS and overall survival (OS) for cohort A were 8.3 (95% CI: 5.3-not reached (NR)) and 28 (95% CI: 12-NR) months, with 2-year and 3-year OS rates of 56% (95% CI: 41-76%) and 44% (95% CI: 28-69%), respectively. In cohorts B and C, ORR was 8% (95% CI: 0-38%) and 14% (95% CI: 2%-43%); median PFS was 4.8 (95% CI: 4.0-12) and 3.3 (95% CI: 1.9-4.8) months; and median OS was 18 (95% CI: 13-NR) and 10 (95% CI: 8.9-24) months, respectively. Preplanned translational analyses showed that circulating tumor DNA response, increased tumor-infiltrating lymphocytes and enrichment of frameshift indel neoantigens were associated with durable clinical benefit. These data suggest that a subset of HRD PC may derive prolonged benefit from PARP-ICB maintenance and support further development of biomarker-guided precision immunotherapy strategies in PC. ClinicalTrials.gov identifier: NCT04666740 .
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Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the Socratic graph.