New Hope for Treating Advanced Endometrial Cancer
- A new treatment strategy combines durvalumab (IMFINZI), an immunotherapy drug, with olaparib (Lynparza), a PARP inhibitor, targeting advanced endometrial cancer.
- Immunotherapy activates the body’s immune system to fight cancer, while PARP inhibitors prevent cancer cells from repairing DNA damage.
- Study results suggest significant benefits for this approach over traditional treatments like chemotherapy, including including a delay in the cancer coming back and longer survival.
- Combination therapy may be suitable for patients resistant to other drugs or with advanced metastatic endometrial cancer, providing new hope for those with limited treatment options.
The strategy combines two drugs: durvalumab (IMFINZI), an immunotherapy drug, and olaparib (Lynparza), a PARP inhibitor.
Read MoreThis combination therapy represents a significant advancement, offering new hope to women with limited treatment options.
“This new may very well be practice changing.” Dr. Deanna Gerber, a gynecological oncologist at NYU Langone’s Perlmutter Cancer Center, told SurvivorNet.
“There are several recent studies that have shown a benefit of the addition of immunotherapy, such as IMFINZI, to chemotherapy. This is the first study to show a clinically meaningful benefit to immunotherapy plus a PARP inhibitor in the treatment of endometrial cancer,” Dr Gerber says.
Combining therapies
Combining treatments, whether it’s immunotherapy and chemotherapy or using two immunotherapies together, may be an option for certain patients with endometrial cancer.
- Cases where a patient becomes resistant to other drugs
- Difficult cases of endometrial cancer that have advanced to the metastatic stage (spread to distant parts of the body).
In a long overdue development, a combination of IMFINZI and Lynparza alongside chemotherapy, can help delay disease progression for patients with advanced disease.
This multi-pronged approach targets cancer cells more effectively with drugs that each use different mechanisms of action, potentially improving patient outcomes in challenging scenarios.
” For a long time, patients with early stage endometrial cancer generally do very well with a combination of surgery, maybe some radiotherapy. However, there is a population of patients that are diagnosed at a later stage, stage three or four, or that have their cancer come back after initial therapy. And those patients have had a really hard time,” Dr. Shannon Westin, a a clinical investigator with the department of gynecologic oncology and reproductive medicine at MD Anderson Cancer Center.
“We’ve had worse outcomes for them for probably about seven or eight years. Chemotherapy has been the standard of care for this patient population. And so the goal was to add new medications to chemotherapy, both with the chemo and following the chemo as a maintenance strategy to try to improve outcomes for patients,” she adds.
How Does IMFINZI and LYNPARZA Work?
IMFINZI is a type of immunotherapy called human monoclonal antibody.
It is a small molecule that binds to certain proteins on the surface of cancer cells. These include PD-1, PD-L1, and CD80 proteins that help cancer cells evade destruction by a patient’s native immune system.
More specifically, PD-1 and CD80 are proteins expressed on several immune cells. These proteins can interact with PD-L1, another protein expressed by tumor cells, essentially helping tumors hide from the immune system.
IMFINZI locates the hidden cancer cells and tells the immune system where to find them. It accomplishes that by latching onto the PD-L1 proteins and preventing them from interacting with PD-1 and CD80 proteins.
Lynparza belongs to a class of medication called poly-ADP ribose polymerase (PARP) inhibitors. These medications work by preventing cancer cells from repairing their damaged DNA, which eventually leads to their death.
The DUO-E trial showed that Imfinzi plus Lynparza and Imfinzi alone both significantly improved the amount of time people can live without their cancer coming back in advanced endometrial cancer when added to chemotherapy. For patients with advanced endometrial cancer, or disease that has come back, they have historically had few treatment options that effectively target their cancer.
The results suggest that the immunotherapy-PARP inhibitor combo can fill that critical gap in advanced endometrial cancer care.
The carefully designed study enrolled 699 patients in 253 locations across 22 countries including the US, South America, Europe, and Asia. All patients had newly diagnosed or recurrent advanced epithelial endometrial carcinoma (stages III or IV).
“The addition of both the durvalumab, which is an immunotherapy and addition of the immunotherapy plus PARP inhibitor Lynparza helped people live longer without their cancer coming back,” Dr. Westin says.
“And that’s progression-free survival. So we saw an improvement in progression-free survival in both groups, but importantly, the addition of the new drug, the PARP inhibitor, really seemed to enhance the benefit that we saw in the patient population.”
Dr. Gerber adds that the positive results is exciting “and really shows promise for the treatment of advanced stage and metastatic endometrial cancer, which is universally considered difficult to treat. There has been a lot of momentum lately in the treatment of this group of patients and I look forward to seeing the results.”
Dr. Ronald Natale explains how immunotherapy works to treat cancer.
Questions to Ask Your Doctor
If you have been diagnosed with advanced endometrial cancer, here are some questions you may consider asking your doctor to help understand your situation:
- What is the stage of my endometrial cancer?
- Would I benefit from Immunotherapy and/or a PARP inhibitor?
- What benefits and side effects can I expect from treatment?
- Are there ways to manage the side effects of the treatment I receive?
- How much of my care will be covered by insurance and how much can I expect to pay out of pocket?
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