Ovarian cancer is the fourth biggest contributor to female cancer mortality, accounting for 4% of all malignancies diagnosed in women. In the United Kingdom (UK), there are seven thousand new cases of ovarian cancer annually and four thousand two hundred deaths from the disease. The standard treatment approach currently consists of surgical debulking and chemotherapy, usually based around a combination of carboplatin and paclitaxel. Most ovarian cancers are initially chemo-responsive however the majority of patients whose disease initially responds subsequently develop recurrent disease.~Once patients recur, treatment options become less numerous and less effective. Progression free survival rates for platinum-sensitive disease are only about 13 months and the outlook for patients with platinum-resistant disease is much worse.~This study is exploring a new combination of drugs fosbretabulin, a vascular disrupting agent and pazopanib, a tyrosine kinase inhibitor. There is scientific rational for combining these two types of drugs as they should be able to work in combination through contrasting mechanisms of action.~The first part of the study is a dose finding exercise with cohorts of patients being given drugs with in combination until the recommended dose of both drugs is found. Patients in each cohort will be monitored closely for safety and drug toxicity.~The second part of the study has a randomised component where patients will receive the combination of drugs or pazopanib alone with the aim to determine whether there is an advantage in progression free survival for patients that receive pazopanib and fosbretabulin. This will be monitored by RECIST.
The first part of this study is to find the recommended dosages of a combination of two drugs: pazopanib and fosbretabulin, which will be given to female patients with relapsed ovarian cancer.~The second part of the study involves comparing the recommended dose of pazopanib and fosbretabulin in combination against pazopanib alone in female patients with relapsed ovarian cancer to determine whether the combination is more beneficial that pazopanib on it's own.