Immunotherapy And Surviving Cancer
- A woman, under the age of 40, has survived 12 tumors (five cancerous) across the span of her lifetimesomething researchers say can lead the way for early detection and immunotherapy in cancer cases, according to a study published in the Science Advances journal.
- Making immunotherapy drugs accessible to more people, and figuring how to make them work better, is a huge endeavor and a major focus of the world's researchers, as well as the big pharma companies that help fund them. SurvivorNet previously had a chance to sit down with a leader at one of the companies that’s really driving immunotherapy, Adam Lenkowsky, the head of U.S. Commercial at Bristol-Myers Squibb.
- Lenkowsky explained, much of BMS' focus will also be directed at combinations of immunotherapy drugs. When paired together, immunotherapy drugs, which empower the body's own immune system to fight cancer, can have tremendous lifesaving potential.
According to a study published in the Science Advances journal, scientists found that the woman’s 12 tumors, five of which were cancerous, were because of mutations in a gene inherited from her parents, The Independent reports.
Read MoreThe womanwho has microcephaly, a condition when the baby’s head is smaller than normal, and skin spotsbegan developing a tumor in her body when she was just a baby, but more continued to grow every few years in different areas of her body.
“We still don't understand how this individual could have developed during the embryonic stage, nor could have overcome all these pathologies,” said Marcos Malumbres, the head of the Cell Division and Cancer Group at the Spanish National Cancer Research Centre (CNIO).
He said the study revealed a new way to find tumors prior to clinical testing and diagnostic imaging, adding, “It also provides a novel way to stimulate the immune response to a cancerous process.”
After analyzing her genetic information, researchers eventually found MAD1L1 gene mutations and concluded the woman’s case was unique because they cause changes in the number of chromosomes in the cells.
This case is different from other gene mutations that change the number of chromosomes in cells because of its aggressiveness, The Independent explains.
Researchers were interested in how the five cancerous tumors in the woman’s body vanished without any trouble.
“The constant production of altered cells has generated a chronic defensive response in the patient against these cells, and that helps the tumors to disappear,” the study’s hypothesis explains.
Dr. Malumbres added, "We think that boosting the immune response of other patients would help them to halt the tumoural development.”
The study suggests that the immune system could release a defensive response against cells with an incorrect chromosome number.
Exceptional Responders
If I decide to enter a clinical trial, what kind of result can I expect? There are a number of ways to answer this question. You should ask your doctor, or whoever is running your trial, for the data they have so far on the outcome of the treatment they're testing.
Why Do Some People Respond Better to Treatment?
You should also ask whether there have been other people in the trial who have had a particularly positive response. They call these exceptional responders. It's something of an excruciating question, why some people respond to treatments better than others. In many cases, oncologists are still trying to figure out the answer to this. Just being able to ask the question may well help you make a better decision if you're looking at a clinical trial.
Immunotherapy Accessibility
Making immunotherapy drugs accessible to more people, and figuring how to make them work better, is a huge endeavor and a major focus of the world's researchers, as well as the big pharma companies that help fund them. SurvivorNet previously had a chance to sit down with a leader at one of the companies that’s really driving immunotherapy, Adam Lenkowsky, the head of U.S. Commercial at Bristol-Myers Squibb.
BMS, as the company is known, consummated a huge merger about three years ago that it hopes will have an enormous impact on the future of cancer treatment: the $74 billon acquisition of Celgene.
"The future of cancer treatment is incredibly bright," Lenkowsky told SurvivorNet in a conversation that took place during the People V. Cancer conference, hosted by The Atlantic LIVE in collaboration with SurvivorNet. "When we see patients now for three, four, five years living completely cancer-free, it really is an exciting time in cancer treatment."
Lenkowsky said that his commitment to furthering cancer care is deeply personal. Seven years ago, he lost his father-in-law to advanced lung cancer. "I saw firsthand the effects that chemotherapy had on him," Lenkowsky said. "And so that's somebody that I fight for every single day at work."
Combining Immunotherapies
Going forward, Lenkowsky explained, much of BMS' focus will also be directed at combinations of immunotherapy drugs. When paired together, immunotherapy drugs, which empower the body's own immune system to fight cancer, can have tremendous lifesaving potential.
In a previous interview with SurvivorNet, Bristol-Myers Squibb chairman and CEO Dr. Giovanni Carforio also said that the future of cancer therapy may lie in combination treatments.
The Biggest Pharma Deal Ever Bristol-Myers Squibb's CEO on What's Next For Cancer Treatment
Lenkowsky shared that one of the most important and encouraging recent developments for BMS, and for the future of cancer, is the ability to use immunotherapy as the first course of treatment after someone is diagnosed with advanced cancer.
The main immunotherapy drug from BMS is called Opdivo, which falls into a class of immunotherapy drugs called checkpoint inhibitors. They work by blocking a part of the immune system that prevents it from attacking cancer cells. In blocking that signal, the drugs give the immune system a green light to go in and fight off cancer.
Nobel Prize Winner Dr. Jim Allison On What's Next For Immunotherapy To Save Lives
Dr. Jim Allison, whose discovery of checkpoint inhibitors won him the 2018 Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine, previously told SurvivorNet that, with the emergence and growth of these new checkpoint inhibitors, "For the first time, we're getting truly curative therapies in many kinds of diseases. And not just in melanoma but in lung cancer, kidney cancer, bladder cancer, Hodgkin's lymphoma, Merkel cell cancer, head and neck cancer. It goes on and on."
Tailoring Treatments to Match Specific Cancers
One of the areas that will be top-of-mind for Bristol-Myers Squibb is figuring out how to tailor treatments to specific cancer types in an approach that a lot of players in the field. New drugs are matched to specific subtypes of cancers with very specific characteristics such as genetic mutations. The remarkable progress in precision medicine goes hand-in-hand with a major shift in the way that companies and researchers approach cancer that is, as countless different diseases rather than one overarching illness.
The hope, said Lenkowsky, is to "turn cancer from what is an acute illness into a chronic illness."
Contributing: SurvivorNet Staff
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