How Immunotherapy is changing cancer treatment

[David Baxter PhD]

Experimental no longer: How Immunotherapy is changing cancer treatment
CBC News
July 20, 2018

It seems to help some cancer patients but not all, and only about 20-30% of cancer patients are eligible for immunotherapy trials. And there can be some potentially serious side effects.

Immunotherapy boosts the immune system or helps the immune system to find cancer and attack it. CORRECTION: An earlier headline on this video referred to a lack of evidence for immunotherapy in treating cancer. In fact, there is evidence immunotherapy works for some cancers. [6:00 minutes]

 

[Daniel E.]

‘An exciting study': Expert weighs in on novel cancer treatments

A study investigated a novel way of administering anticancer medications. The experimental treatment eradicated ovarian and colorectal cancers in mice.

www.medicalnewstoday.com

Immunotherapy techniques do not fully eradicate cancer tumors without significant side effects. Scientists consider this a major challenge for immunotherapy...

Now, scientists at the Veiseh lab at Rice University in Houston have designed a first-of-its-kind drug delivery system to overcome this issue...

They designed a drug delivery system — consisting of engineered human cells — capable of delivering continuously high doses of IL2 to the cancer site itself...

At the end of the study period, the scientists recorded a 100% tumor eradication rate in the animals with ovarian cancer, while seven out of eight animals with colorectal cancer were completely tumor-free.

 

[Daniel E.]

New cancer treatment offers hope to patients out of options

Exclusive: UK trial finds finds combination of drugs can work where tumours have become resistant to immunotherapy

www.theguardian.com

August 22, 2022

...“Immunotherapy has shown amazing promise in cancer care over the last decade, but it doesn’t work well in all cancers and cancers can often become resistant. This combination might be a way to target their cancer even after it has stopped responding to immunotherapy.”

Guadecitabine may help overcome this resistance, doctors, researchers and scientists involved in the trial have discovered.

Of the 30 patients whose cancer activity was analysed, for 37% the disease was stopped in its tracks, with no tumour progression for 24 weeks or more. Three-fifths of the group (60%) were resistant to immunotherapy before the trial. Of those, almost four in 10 (39%) did not get any sicker after taking the drug combination.

The new treatment seems particularly beneficial for lung cancer patients. Of those resistant to immunotherapy, half had their disease controlled for 24 weeks or more.

Alison Sowden, 61, from Dorset, was diagnosed with lung cancer four years ago and told she had a year to live, but then received pembrolizumab for three years. She is now free of cancer.

“I know there is a chance that my cancer may come back and develop resistance to treatment, so it is reassuring to know research efforts aiming to reverse cancer’s resistance to immunotherapy are under way,” she said. “I hope this new experimental drug combination will eventually make it to the clinic and help people who have developed resistance to pembrolizumab.”