When a person develops solid tumors in the stomach or esophagus or straight, oncologists know how to treat them. But the priests of see with severe effects on the quality of life. That may include stomach elimination or magazine, a permanent colostomy bag, the radiation that makes patients damage and lasting damage due to chemotherapy.
Then, a research group at the Sloan Kettering Memorial Cancer, using a medication from the GSK Pharmaceutical Company, tried something different.
The researchers began with a group of 103 people. The trial participants were between 2 to 3 percent of cancer patients with tumors who should respond to immunotherapy, a drug that exceeds barriers that prevent the immune system from attacking cancers.
But in clinical trials, immunotherapy is not supposed to replace standard treatments. The researchers, led by Dr. Luis A. Díaz Jr. and Dr. Andrea Cercek, decided to give Dostarlimab, an immunotherapy medicine, alone.
The result was impressive and could contribute hope to the limited cohort of patients containing thesis cans.
In 49 of the patients, who had rectal cancer, the tumors disappeared and, after five years, have not resorted. Cancers also disappeared for 35 or 54 patients who had other types of cancer, even in stomach, esophagus, liver, endometrium, urinary tract and prostate.
Of the 103 patients, the cancers were raised again in just five. Three obtained additional doses of immunotherapy and one, whose tumor was used in a lymphatic ganglion, the lymphatic ganglion was removed. Those four patients have no evidence of illness. The fifth patient had additional immunotherapy that caused the tumor to be reduced.
The researchers reported their results on Sunday at the annual meeting of the American Cancer Research Association and in an article published in the New England Journal of Medicine.
The results, said Dr. Bert Vogelstein, an oncologist by Johns Hopkins in Baltimore, are “innovative.”
The previous phases of the development of the medication occurred in its laboratory, and has observed its progress with astonishment.
“Twenty or 30 years ago, the idea that you could take great tumors of many different organists and treat them without surgery would seem science fiction,” Hey said. But, he added, the discovery did not arise completely in the researchers’ minds. Instead, he said, it is based on 40 years of research “starting with a very basic science.”
The reason why immunotherapy briefly had an opportunity against large thesis is because, as a result, such tumors are studied with unusual proteins that indicate the immune system to destroy them. But the tumors placed a shield that blocks the attacks of the immune system. Immunotherapy drills the shield and allows the immune system to destroy tumors.
For patients such as those of the study, said Dr. Michael Overman, a specialist in gastrointestinal cancer at the MD Anderson Cancer Center in Houston, the results show immunotherapy without chemotherapy, radiation treatments or surgeries is a valid treatment “and is so logical that we should do it.”
But, for now, that may not be so easy. The medicine costs around $ 11,000 per dose, and patients need nine infusions of approximately six months. To obtain insurance coverage, the medicine must be included in clinical guidelines, sets of recommendations for treatments produced by professional organizations.
It is approved as treatment for uterine cans with mismatch repair mutations and is included in clinical guidelines for rectal cancer treatment, based on a small previous study. But patients with other cancers can have trouble getting the medicine, said Dr. Díaz. Memorial Sloan Kettering, thought, is still recruiting for their clinical trial, so patients who have tumors with non -coincident repair mutations and qualify for the study can release the medication.
For some patients, immunotherapy has a miraculous bone. It can have side effects: the most common among patients in the study were fatigue, eruption and itching. The rarest side effects included pulmonary infections and encephalitis.
Maureen Sideris, 71, or Amenia, NY, discovered that he had cancer after he tried to eat a hamburger.
“I wouldn’t go down,” he said. There was some type of block. It turned out to be a tumor at the juncture of his stomach and esophagus.
She went to Sloan Kettering in 2019. Her surgeon told her necessary surgery, chemotherapy and radiation and that surgery would be difficult: they could have to get a piece of their stomach and move their esophagus
But his tumor had a mutation of mismatch, so he joined the clinical trial. The early infusion was October 14 of that year. In January, his tumor was gone. Mrs. Sideris has a side effect of treatment: it needs to take medications now to improve how their kidneys work. But she says it is worth paying that price to avoid the onerous treatment that awaits her leg.
“It’s bone a trip,” he said. But, he added, he reasoned that he had nothing to lose when he agreed to try immunotherapy.
“I still underwent surgery as a support if it didn’t work,” he said.
