Last resort cancer immunotherapy treatments should become first choice, experts say after trial success

Unbelievable’ results could translate to years of extra life for some patients

Cutting edge cancer treatments which are currently held back as a last resort for patients with no other options could mean people “live years longer” when used as a first choice, experts have said.
Immunotherapies, which reprogramme the immune system to identify and attack tumours, are a promising, but experimental group of treatments usually given after aggressive chemotherapy has failed.
Results from a pair of clinical trials in patients with advanced, treatment resistant cancers found immunotherapy increased survival, with fewer side-effects, when used immediately.
Experts said this shows more needs to be done to make these experimental treatments available to patients when they can provide the most benefit, rather than holding off because of risks or costs.
Both sets of findings were reported at the European Society for Medical Oncology Congress in Berlin.
The first of the trials, led by the Institute of Cancer Research and Royal Marsden NHS Foundation Trust, looked at the immunotherapy drug pembrolizumab in nearly 900 patients with advanced head and neck cancers. The disease had returned to them after treatment or spread throughout the body.
But the immunotherapy drug increased life expectancy by 40 per cent when compared to radical chemotherapy.
Among patients where the drug worked best, median life expectancy after diagnosis was 15 months, compared to 11 months for those given the usual cocktail of chemotherapy and targeted cancer drugs.
Only 17 per cent of patients experienced serious side-effects, compared to 69 per cent on extreme chemotherapy.
The downside of immunotherapies is that not every patient will respond, but modern genetic testing methods can allow doctors to identify which tumours are likely to be vulnerable to certain drugs.
In pembrolizumab’s case, it only worked in around 23 per cent of patients, compared to 36 per cent given chemotherapy.
It was most effective in those whose tumours have particular markers for the immune system to target.
In cases where the drug worked best median cases the results were “unbelievable”, the Royal Marsden researchers said.
“We couldn’t believe it when we saw the results,” said Professor Kevin Harrington, who led the study. “None of us expected pembrolizumab on its own to work so well in some of these patients – and it raises the prospect that we could spare some people chemotherapy altogether.”

The Independent