Allegheny Health Network Cancer Center has launched a clinical study called RANDY'S Trial, which will test whether medications already cleared by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration can alter the scar tissue that forms around abdominal tumors. The Pittsburgh-based center has opened enrollment, according to The Clinical Trial Vanguard, which reported the launch on October 17, 2026.
The trial's name is an acronym for Repurposed And Naturally-Derived Drugs for the Treatment of Fibrosis in Peritoneal Carcinomatosis. Patrick Wagner, a surgical oncologist at AHN, is the principal investigator and leads a team drawn from several disciplines.
Why it matters
Dense scar tissue, or fibrosis, is one reason some patients with appendiceal and other abdominal cancers never reach the operating room. The tissue can blur the line between healthy and diseased areas, and it can hold cancer cells in place so that they are missed when a surgeon works between tissue layers. The trial's stated main goal is to raise the number of patients who meet the criteria for cytoreduction, the surgical removal of visible tumor deposits.
The study's funding path is unusual. It did not come from a drug company's development program or a federal research grant. A single community fundraiser, the La Sera d'Oro gala, brought in $44,000 in 2025 to pay for it, The Clinical Trial Vanguard reported.
A firefighter's name, and a fund that keeps going
The trial honors Lt. Randy Meyer II, a Pittsburgh firefighter who lived with a rare form of appendix cancer for more than ten years before he died. His widow, Stephanie Meyer, carries on the Spread Goodness Fund, and its yearly gala remains the trial's financial engine. The third La Sera d'Oro is set for November 28, with tickets on sale through November 14.
The science the team is pursuing is a form of drug repurposing: taking medicines that are already on the market for other uses and checking whether they can break down or reshape scar tissue in the abdomen. If any of them can, the hope is that a course of treatment before surgery would make tumors easier to separate from nearby organs.
The backdrop is a disease that appears to be growing more common in younger adults. A 2025 study in Annals of Internal Medicine found that cases of appendiceal adenocarcinoma have been rising among younger people, according to The Clinical Trial Vanguard. Cancer that has spread through the peritoneum, the membrane lining the abdomen, is among the harder forms of the disease to treat.
The reporting also points to a multicenter randomized trial of cytoreduction combined with HIPEC, a heated chemotherapy wash delivered into the abdomen during surgery, in patients with mucinous appendiceal neoplasms. That study, published in Annals of Surgical Oncology, enrolled 121 patients whose average peritoneal cancer index already indicated extensive disease. The figure illustrates how much access to surgery depends on how far the tumor has spread and on the tissue structure surrounding it.
For the AHN team, the first question is narrow and testable: whether fibrosis in peritoneal carcinomatosis can be changed by drugs before an operation. That result, once it exists, will be the one to watch.
