For many women with ovarian cancer, preventing and treating a recurrence of the disease is a key part of their cancer journey. And advances in research and science have made these treatments far more promising than before.
Indeed, ovarian cancer can often come back after treatment puts it into remission, a phenomenon known as relapse. Typically patients with relapsed ovarian cancer will receive another round of chemotherapy, a treatment that kills cancer cells. But new and evolving evidence from clinical trials may add in another therapy for relapsed treatment: immunotherapy. SurvivorNet spoke to Dr. David Cibula, former President of the European Society of Gynecological Oncology (ESGO), about the details of this new evidence and what it means for women with relapsed ovarian cancer.
New Evidence For Adding DCVAC to Chemotherapy for Relapsed Treatment
Read MoreWhat is DCVAC?
DCVAC stands for Dendritic Cell Vaccine. According to Cibula, DCVAC is a vaccine that essentially stimulates your immune cells to specifically target and kill cancer cells. Because it specifically designed to kill only cancerous cells, there are actually few side effects to using and adding in this treatment with existing regimens. For this reason, Cibula believes it’s a particularly attractive potential option for ovarian cancer patients. He says that ‘the tolerability of the treatment is very good, and there are virtually no serious adverse events associated with this treatment. And this makes it very attractive.”Additional trials examining whether DCVAC can be added to other treatments
Dr. Cibula says this exciting result has prompted a number of other clinical trials to see if DCVAC can also be added to other treatments, such as PARP inhibitors and Bevacizumab. “They are currently ongoing dozens of trials trying to combine immunotherapy with the standard of care in different settings of patients with ovarian cancer,” says Cibula. Despite these ongoing trials, it will take a number of years to see these additions change standard of care for ovarian cancer, because their results will not be available for another 4-5 years. Cibula says, “But all those trials are ongoing, so we will have to wait an additional four to five years to get those results.” Nonetheless, the developments in immunotherapy have been promising thus far, so women should be hopeful for the results of these ongoing trials.
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