When a person causes solid tumors at a stomach, esophagus, or workplace, a tumor specialist knows how to treat them. But treatment often has a serious impact on the quality of life. This may include stomach or bladder removal, permanent context -made bags, radiation, patients, and infertility and continuous damage caused by infertility and chemotherapy.
Therefore, the research group of the Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, which uses the drug of pharmaceutical company GSK, attempted something else.
The researchers started with a group of 103 people. Test participants were one of the 2-3 % of cancer patients with tumors that had to respond to immunotherapy, and it is a drug that overcomes barriers to prevent the immune system from attacking cancer.
But in clinical trials, immunotherapy should not replace standard treatment. Researchers led by Luis A. Diaz JR. and Dr. Andrea Cerceck offerImmunotherapy drug itself.
The result was amazing and could bring hope to the limited cohort of the patient.
The tumor disappeared from 49 patients with rectal cancer and did not recur after five years. Cancer also disappeared into 35 of the 54 patients with other cancers, including the stomach, esophagus, liver, uterus membrane, urinary tract and prostate gland.
Of the 103 patients, cancer recurred in only five. Three have additional capacity immunotherapy, and one tumor recurred from the lymph nodes removed the lymph nodes. So far, these four patients have no evidence of the disease. The fifth patient has additional immunotherapy, causing tumor contraction.
The investigator reported the results at the annual meeting of the American Cancer Research Association on Sunday. paper It has been published in New England Journal of Medicine.
The result is a “groundbreaking” Dr. Berttimore’s Johns Hopkins, a tumor specialist, Bert Vogelstein.
The initial stage of drug development occurred in his laboratory and surprisingly watched progress.
“20 or 30 years ago, the idea that you can eat and treat a large tumor in many organs will look like a science fiction, but he added that this discovery did not flee completely in the hearts of the researchers.
The reason why immunotherapy had a chance for these large tumors is that the patient’s tumor has a mutation of mismatches in the genes, so it prevents DNA damage from correcting. As a result, such tumors are studied as unusual proteins that signal them to destroy them in the immune system. However, the tumor sprayed a shield that blocks the immune system attack. Immunotherapy allows the immune system to break through the shield and destroy the tumor.
Dr. Michael Oversman, an expert at the MD Anderson Cancer Center, said, “Chemotherapy, radiation therapy or surgery is a valid treatment for patients who participated in this study, and it must be logical to be done.”
But now is not so easy. The drug is about $ 11,000 per dose and nine infusions are required for 6 months. To get insurance coverage, the drug must be included in the recommended set of clinical guidelines and treatments produced by a professional tissue.
It has been approved as a cure of mutual recovery mutations and is included in clinical guidelines for rectal cancer treatment based on early small studies. But other cancer patients may have difficulty receiving drugs, Dr. Diaz said. However, since Memorial Sloan Kettering is still recruited for clinical trials, patients with qualifications with inconsistent recovery mutations and qualifications for research can free the drug.
For some patients, immunotherapy was miracle. The most common among patients in this study was fatigue, rash and itching. More rare side effects included lung infection and encephalitis.
Maureeen Sideris, a 71 -year -old New York Amania, knew that he had cancer after saying to eat a hamburger.
“This will not go down,” she said. There was a kind of blockage. It turned out to be a tumor at the point of view of her stomach and esophagus.
She went to Sloan Kettering in 2022. Her surgeon said that surgery, chemotherapy and radiation would be difficult and surgery would be difficult.
But her tumor had a mismatch recovery mutation, so she joined the clinical trial. The first injection was on October 14 that year. Until January, her tumor disappeared. Sideris has one side effect in treatment. She must take medicine to improve the function of the adrenal glands. But she says that she is worth paying the price to avoid the cumbersome treatment she saved for.
“This was a trip,” she said. But she added that there is nothing to lose when he agreed to try immunotherapy.
“I still had surgery on a backup if it didn’t work,” she said.
