United States: In a breakthrough achievement, as revealed by the doctors, a therapeutic drug that “melts away” tumors has drastically increased the chances of recovering from bowel cancer, which would ultimately eliminate the need for surgery.
More about the news
Pembrolizumab binds to and inhibits the action of a particular receptor on the surface of immune cells that will go on to kill cancer cells.
The change, which replaced pre-operative chemotherapy with the administration of the drug before the surgery, marked a huge success, with more patients being declared cancer-free, as the Guardian reported.
They were delivered in the summer at the American Society of Clinical Oncology (ASCO), which is the largest cancer event globally.
The main centres were University college London, the university college London hospital, Christie national health service foundation trust in Manchester, st James’s university hospital in Leeds, university hospital Southampton, and the university of Glasgow.
What more have experts to say?
According to Prof. Mark Saunders, who is a consultant clinical oncologist at the Christie, the trial results were “really very exciting”.
Saunders added, “Immunotherapy prior to surgery could well become a ‘game-changer’ for these patients with this type of cancer. Not only is the outcome better, but it saves patients from having more conventional chemotherapy, which often has more side effects. In the future, immunotherapy may even replace the need for surgery.”
Bowel cancer is the second most frequent cause of cancer death globally. Based on the most recent data available, there are more than 1.9 million new cases globally, World Health Organisation data (WHO) indicates.
How was the trial conducted?
In the trial, funded by Merck Sharp and Dohme and sponsored by University College London, the researchers selected for the trial 32 patients with stage II or III bowel cancer and a certain genetic profile (MMR deficient/MSI-High bowel cancer) from five hospitals in the UK.
There are genes that have been found to be more prevalent in people with certain characteristics; in particular, around 15 percent of patients who have stage two or three bowel cancer have this mutation in their genes.
Normal treatment entails chemotherapy followed by surgery; however, the patients were given pembrolizumab, branded as Keytruda, before the surgery for nine weeks and then followed up at certain times.
This indicates that, as of the day they completed the survey, 59 percent of patients showed no signs of cancer after pembrolizumab therapy, while any cancer seen in the 41 percent of patients who had surgery was successfully excised.
The approach also meant patients did not need to go for any form of post-surgery chemotherapy, which is notorious for their side effects and can hardly be easy to handle.
What more have the experts stated?
According to Dr. Kai-Keen Shiu, the trial’s chief investigator and a consultant medical oncologist at UCLH, “Our results indicate that pembrolizumab is a safe and highly effective treatment to improve outcomes in patients with high-risk bowel cancers, increasing the chances of curing the disease at an early stage,” as the Guardian reported.
Moreover, as a caution, Shiu said that the team would be required to wait to see if the patients being examined in the trial should remain cancer-free over a longer period of time. However, the indications at the beginning were “extremely positive.”
Shiu added, “Immunotherapy can make tumors disappear before surgery. If you melt the cancer away before surgery, you normally triple survival chances,” and, “If patients have a complete response to pembrolizumab, it can triple your chance of survival.
Further added, “Patients also don’t need any chemotherapy after, so they avoid all those side effects.”