This new "Trojan Horse" drug has successfully treated 6 types of cancerous tumor

A toxic antibody is the latest promising weapon as a broad-spectrum treatment for multiple forms of advanced cancer.

Nicknamed the "Trojan Horse" approach to chemotherapy, the new drug has proven worthy to progress in the clinical trial chain to be tested on a larger number of patients. This is not a legendary panacea, but this approach could be as close as possible.

Researchers from the London Institute of Cancer Research and the Royal Marsden NHS Foundation Trust have tested the new treatment in a clinical trial involving 147 patients to badess its benefits and potential risks side effects.

This drug, called tisotumab vedotin, or simply TV, is composed of a monoclonal antibody and a cytotoxic component that can cause life-threatening cell damage.

The antibody, if you will, is the spectacular gift horse at the door of the enemy – he searches for cell signaling flags in membranes called tissue factors and requires entry.

Although all kinds of healthy cells have this factor, a wide variety of tumors exploit it as a way to become uncontrollable, making it an attractive target for the cytotoxic chemical weapon to look for and destroy.

In this case, the component responsible for this killing task is monomethyl auristatin E, a molecule that prevents cells from reproducing.

"What's so exciting about this treatment, is that its mechanism of action is completely new.It acts as a Trojan horse to infiltrate into cancer cells and kill them." the interior, "said oncologist Johann de Bono of the Cancer Institute.

"Our first study showed that it could potentially treat a large number of cancer types, especially those with very low survival rates."

These included cervical cancer of the uterus, bladder, ovaries, endometrium, esophagus and lung.

People with bladder cancer experienced the most impressive response: 27% of registered volunteers found that their disease was stabilizing. Endometrial cancer was at the other end, with a more modest 7% improvement in subjects.

"It's exciting to see the potential shown by television on a range of cancers difficult to treat," said General Director of the Cancer Institute, Paul Workman.

"I look forward to seeing the progress made at the clinic and hope it will benefit patients who currently have few treatment options."

This progress is slow. Phase I clinical trials began in 2013 with TV security testing of only 27 patients.

A year and a half later, serious health problems appeared, including signs of severe type 2 diabetes, inflammation of the mucous membranes and fever.

Lower doses reduced the more worrying side effects, although treatment was still far from problematic, including nosebleeds, nausea, and fatigue.

However, when it comes to life and death issues, diseases such as those that are not can seem trivial in comparison. The Phase I trials gave way to Phase II, which showed that television could make a big difference to many cancer patients that few people will treat.

"The television has manageable side effects, and we found good responses in patients of our trial, all with advanced-stage cancer, who had been heavily pre-treated with other drugs and short-lived. of options, "said Bono

The next step is to expand the phase II tests to cancers of the intestine and pancreas, while testing it as a second-line drug for cervical cancers that do not have perished after the initial treatments.

It is important to note that this is not a panacea or the end of cancer as we know it. But when so many promising treatments fail beyond the baseline, it is exciting to find a promising treatment that could make a difference for a wide variety of advanced cancers.

If all goes well, one can expect a third test phase in several years, during which the effectiveness and safety of the drug are compared to similar treatments.

All this takes time and money, so we can not expect television to be available for some time (if at all). But the demonstrated success of a centuries-old military strategy applied to an anticancer drug bodes well for treatments of this type.

"We are in desperate need of innovative treatments like this one that can fight cancer in a novel way and remain effective even against tumors that have become resistant to conventional treatments," said Workman.

This research was published in Lancet Oncology.