New Cancer Breakthrough: A Single Immunotherapy Doubles Survival Time (5 minutes reading)

A new treatment using immunotherapy has helped patients with head and neck cancer live twice as long without the disease coming back, according to a major international study.

The drug, pembrolizumab, was tested in a large clinical trial across 24 countries. Patients who received it before and after surgery stayed cancer-free for an average of five years, compared to just 2.5 years with standard treatment alone.

This is a big deal because treatments for this type of cancer haven’t changed in over 20 years, and survival rates have been low. The drug works by helping the immune system recognize and attack cancer cells more effectively.

The treatment was especially helpful for patients with high levels of a certain immune marker (PD-L1), but it also worked well for others. Doctors believe giving the drug before surgery helps “train” the immune system to keep fighting the cancer afterward.

One patient, Laura Marston, called the treatment “the gift of life” after surviving stage 4 tongue cancer thanks to the trial.

Experts hope this breakthrough will soon be approved for wider use, potentially changing the future for thousands of patients.

Source: LINK

 

New Immunotherapy Shows Promise in Shrinking Metastatic Tumors (5 minutes reading)

A recent clinical trial led by the National Institutes of Health (NIH) has shown promising results for a new form of cancer treatment called tumor infiltrating lymphocyte (TIL) therapy. This personalized immunotherapy, combined with the drug pembrolizumab (Keytruda), significantly shrank tumors in patients with various metastatic gastrointestinal cancers.

TIL therapy works by selecting immune cells from the patient's tumor that specifically target cancer cells. These cells are then grown in large quantities in a lab and administered back to the patient. In the trial, nearly 24% of patients treated with selected TILs and pembrolizumab saw a substantial reduction in tumor size, compared to only 7.7% of patients treated with TILs alone.

The trial included 91 patients with advanced cancers such as esophageal, stomach, pancreatic, colon, and rectal cancers. The best results were seen in patients who received both TIL therapy and pembrolizumab, with some experiencing tumor shrinkage lasting from several months to over five years.

This breakthrough offers hope for using cell-based immunotherapy to treat common solid tumors, which has been challenging for researchers. The study's lead investigator, Dr. Steven A. Rosenberg, believes this approach could pave the way for more effective cancer treatments in the future.

Researchers are now working on methods to improve TIL therapy by identifying immune cells that target multiple proteins within tumors, aiming to increase the number of patients who respond positively to this treatment.

More information in the LINK