Cancer treatment may soon be subject to a paradigm shift in immunotherapy

Immunotherapy, when used for cancer treatment, could prolong life for longer The experts explained that until now immunotherapy was reserved for most patients last and that the treatment generally consisted of chemotherapy and radiotherapy, failing which they had been tried. In two clinical trials, researchers discovered that first-line immunotherapy could prolong the life of these cancer patients.

Immunotherapies work by altering or reprogramming the body's immune systems so that it recognizes cancer cells and attacks and kills tumor cells. Usually, patients are offered immunotherapies when aggressive chemotherapy has failed. These trials have shown that, in treatment-resistant cancers, early immunotherapy not only increased survival, but also resulted in fewer side effects.

More studies are probably needed before these experimental treatments are the mainstay of cancer patients. However, a risk-benefit badysis can help choose the best options for these patients. These results were all presented at the congress of the European Society of Medical Oncology in Berlin.

Study 1

The first study was conducted by the Cancer Institute and the Royal Marsden NHS Foundation Trust. This study examined pembrolizumab, an immunotherapy drug, in approximately 900 patients with advanced head and neck cancers. In most of these patients, the disease was resistant to treatment and advanced.

The results showed that pembrolizumab increased the life expectancy by 40% compared with conventional chemotherapy. The median life expectancy in immunotherapy was about 15 months compared with chemotherapy (11 months). In addition, 17% of people on immunotherapy had adverse effects, against 69% under extreme chemotherapy.

The negative side of the use of immunotherapy was that only 23% of patients responded to pembrolizumab, compared with 36% of patients treated with chemotherapy. However, in the patients who responded, the results were "incredible," the researchers said. Professor Kevin Harrington, who led the study, said, "We could not believe it when we saw the results. None of us expected that pembrolizumab alone would work equally well in some of these patients – and this suggests that we could save some people some chemotherapy. "The trial is still underway, but we expect some patients to live longer than they would have done if they had received standard chemotherapy," he said. -he explains.

Study 2

The second study focused on the use of nivolumab in advanced colorectal cancer.

Researchers at the University of Southern California have explained that in 4% of patients with colorectal cancer, tumors had a mutation that could affect DNA repair and that these patients survived on average between 14 and 19 months after treatment. The average survival for other types of colorectal cancer is about 25 months.

The use of nivolumab, immunotherapy agent, showed that in 84% of patients, the tumors had at least a little regressed. At the end of the 12 months following this therapy, 77% were alive without progression of their tumors.

According to Professor Paul Workman, General Manager of the Cancer Institute, these studies show that immunotherapy agents could potentially be "a smarter, gentler and more effective first-line treatment". He added, "Now we need to do two things so that more patients can benefit from immunotherapy – find ways to make these drugs work for more patients and reach agreement on cost of these drugs to increase them. affordable for the NHS. "