Cancer research is continuous, resulting in new therapies being developed all the time. For example, immunotherapy, though it had been around for a century, first started seeing widespread use in the 90s. It is now part of the standard of care treatment for some cancers. And recent surprising study results give hope to cancer patients that they may even forego surgery thanks to immunotherapy.
We frequently speak to patients who have had a delay in diagnosing cancer: a negligent delay that allows cancer to progress from early stage – and treatable – cancer to late stage metastatic cancer. Treatment often includes surgery to remove the tumor, chemotherapy, radiation therapy, and, for some cancers, immunotherapy. Sometimes the cancer is advanced enough that all any therapies can do is slow its spread across organs or bones, a miserable procession for patients and their loved ones. Five-year survival rates for many cancers have improved in the last twenty years, though, in part due to refinements in cancer treatments.
Immunotherapy has been in use, in one way or another, for over a century. It uses the body’s own immune system to eradicate cancer cells. As you can imagine there are different ways to attack nearly every cancer, so the therapy for each varies according to the type of response the patient’s oncologist is looking to get. And surprising results in a small trial have given hope that certain checkpoint inhibitors, if started at the right time, may allow a patient to avoid surgery, chemotherapy, and radiation therapy, and all of the side effects that flow from them. Checkpoint inhibitors are a type of antibody that tells T cells to ignore certain “off-switch” proteins worn by cancer cells. These proteins typically turn off the T cell’s immune response, which allows cancer to grow. With the T cells trained to ignore those indicators, the T cells will attack the cancer cells and destroy them. The study was only eighteen participants, but the result was quite remarkable: all eighteen saw their cancer disappear. The study though will open the door to significant further research and has already given hope to the still cancer-free patients in the study, that is, every single patient in the study.
