# NCI-MATCH (EAY131)

Source: https://onco.cc/trials/nci-match/  
OnCo record `nci-match` (Trial). Data CC BY-NC 4.0, attribute "Data from OnCo (onco.cc)"; commercial use needs a licence.

## TL;DR

NCI-MATCH was the largest trial to sequence tumours from thousands of patients across the United States and give each a drug matched to the mutation rather than to the organ. It proved the system could work at national scale, found real activity for a handful of matches, and showed that most single drugs given for a single mutation do little.

## Summary

NCI-MATCH opened in August 2015, run by ECOG-ACRIN for the National Cancer Institute with Keith Flaherty and Peter O'Dwyer as chairs and every NCI cooperative group taking part. Patients whose cancer had progressed on standard therapy, or who had a rare cancer with no standard, had a fresh biopsy sequenced in one of four accredited laboratories with a common assay, and a central rules engine matched alterations to treatment arms, each a single-arm phase 2 with objective response as the endpoint. The trial started with ten arms and grew to nearly 40, testing drugs including dabrafenib with trametinib, nivolumab, trastuzumab emtansine, capivasertib, copanlisib, palbociclib, sunitinib, binimetinib, afatinib, osimertinib, crizotinib, larotrectinib and adavosertib.

The screening results, in the Journal of Clinical Oncology in 2020, described 5,954 patients: sequencing succeeded in the great majority, more than a third had an alteration the trial deemed actionable, and 17.8 percent were assigned to an arm. Rare and less common cancers made up most of the enrolment, which made NCI-MATCH one of the biggest sources of rare-tumour genomics. Among the arms, dabrafenib plus trametinib in BRAF V600-mutant non-melanoma cancers (response rate 38 percent) and nivolumab in mismatch repair-deficient non-colorectal cancers (36 percent) were clearly positive and supported later tumour-agnostic thinking; capivasertib in AKT1-mutant tumours and copanlisib in PIK3CA-mutant tumours showed moderate activity; most arms matching a drug to an amplification, a loss-of-function change or a rarer kinase mutation did not reach their bar. A 2023 Nature Medicine paper drew the lessons together, and a 2024 Clinical Cancer Research analysis showed that activity often depended on tumour type as much as on the mutation.

What NCI-MATCH changed was infrastructure and expectations: a common national assay and rules engine, a precedent for enrolling rare cancers by mutation, and the recognition that genotype-only matching rarely suffices, which led directly to ComboMATCH (combinations chosen from preclinical evidence, opened 2023), myeloMATCH in leukaemia and the iMATCH immunotherapy programme. Its arms continue to be reported as follow-up matures.

## Fields

- Kind: Trial
- Status: active
- Last checked: 2026-09-17
- Also known as: NCI MATCH; Molecular Analysis for Therapy Choice; EAY131; MATCH trial
- Tags: precision-medicine
- Registry id: NCT02465060
- Phase: platform
- Setting: Advanced solid tumours, lymphomas and myeloma that have progressed on standard treatment: central tumour sequencing assigns patients to one of nearly 40 single-agent or doublet targeted-therapy arms by molecular alteration regardless of cancer type
- Sponsor: National Cancer Institute and ECOG-ACRIN
- Enrolled: 5954
- Result: 5,954 patients enrolled; 17.8 percent assigned to an arm. Dabrafenib plus trametinib in BRAF V600 tumours (38 percent response) and nivolumab in dMMR non-colorectal tumours (36 percent) were positive; most single-agent arms were not.
- Outcomes: Assigned to a treatment arm: Enrolled patients 17.8%; Objective response, dabrafenib plus trametinib in BRAF V600 tumours (arm H): Treated patients 38%; Objective response, nivolumab in dMMR non-colorectal tumours (arm Z1D): Treated patients 36%

## Sources

- ClinicalTrials.gov NCT02465060: https://clinicaltrials.gov/study/NCT02465060
- NCI: NCI-MATCH trial: https://www.cancer.gov/about-cancer/treatment/clinical-trials/nci-supported/nci-match
- Flaherty et al., Journal of Clinical Oncology 2020: molecular landscape and actionable alterations in NCI-MATCH: https://doi.org/10.1200/JCO.19.03010
- Salama et al., Journal of Clinical Oncology 2020: dabrafenib and trametinib in BRAF V600 tumours (arm H): https://doi.org/10.1200/JCO.20.00762
- Azad et al., Journal of Clinical Oncology 2020: nivolumab in mismatch repair-deficient non-colorectal cancers (arm Z1D): https://doi.org/10.1200/JCO.19.00818
- O'Dwyer et al., Nature Medicine 2023: the NCI-MATCH trial, lessons for precision oncology: https://doi.org/10.1038/s41591-023-02379-4
- Tumor-specific activity of precision medicines in the NCI-MATCH trial, Clinical Cancer Research 2024: https://doi.org/10.1158/1078-0432.CCR-23-0983

## Connected records

- terms: [Basket, umbrella, and platform trials](https://onco.cc/terms/basket-umbrella-platform/), [Master protocol (platform, basket and umbrella trials)](https://onco.cc/terms/master-protocol/), [Rare cancers](https://onco.cc/terms/rare-cancers/), [Tumour-agnostic (tissue-agnostic) approval](https://onco.cc/terms/tumour-agnostic/)
- technologies: [Cancer variant knowledgebases and molecular tumour boards](https://onco.cc/technologies/variant-knowledgebases/), [Clinical NGS bioinformatics and variant interpretation](https://onco.cc/technologies/ngs-bioinformatics-software/), [Comprehensive genomic profiling](https://onco.cc/technologies/cgp/), [Immune checkpoint inhibitors](https://onco.cc/technologies/checkpoint-inhibitor/), [Small-molecule kinase inhibitors](https://onco.cc/technologies/kinase-inhibitors/)
- drugs: [Adavosertib](https://onco.cc/drugs/adavosertib/), [Afatinib](https://onco.cc/drugs/afatinib/), [Binimetinib](https://onco.cc/drugs/binimetinib/), [Capivasertib](https://onco.cc/drugs/capivasertib/), [Copanlisib](https://onco.cc/drugs/copanlisib/), [Crizotinib](https://onco.cc/drugs/crizotinib/), [Dabrafenib](https://onco.cc/drugs/dabrafenib/), [Larotrectinib](https://onco.cc/drugs/larotrectinib/), [Nivolumab](https://onco.cc/drugs/nivolumab/), [Osimertinib](https://onco.cc/drugs/osimertinib/), [Palbociclib](https://onco.cc/drugs/palbociclib/), [Sunitinib](https://onco.cc/drugs/sunitinib/), [Trametinib](https://onco.cc/drugs/trametinib/), [Trastuzumab emtansine](https://onco.cc/drugs/trastuzumab-emtansine/)
- institutions: [ECOG-ACRIN Cancer Research Group](https://onco.cc/institutions/ecog-acrin/), [Frederick National Laboratory for Cancer Research](https://onco.cc/institutions/frederick-national-lab/), [Massachusetts General Hospital Cancer Center](https://onco.cc/institutions/mgh/), [MD Anderson Cancer Center](https://onco.cc/institutions/md-anderson/), [National Cancer Institute (NIH)](https://onco.cc/institutions/nci/), [Yale Cancer Center / Smilow Cancer Hospital](https://onco.cc/institutions/yale-cancer-center/)
- trials: [ComboMATCH (EAY191)](https://onco.cc/trials/combomatch/), [myeloMATCH](https://onco.cc/trials/myelomatch/), [NCI-COG Pediatric MATCH (APEC1621)](https://onco.cc/trials/pediatric-match/)
- people: [Keith T. Flaherty](https://onco.cc/people/keith-flaherty/), [Peter J. O'Dwyer](https://onco.cc/people/peter-odwyer/)
- bottlenecks: [Rare and paediatric cancers without markets](https://onco.cc/bottlenecks/b-rare-cancers/), [Trial design, endpoints and cost](https://onco.cc/bottlenecks/b-trial-design/)

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