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Cancer Immunotherapy Proves Itself in Earlier-Stage Disease

Web Desk (September Cancer doctors are widening the net for immunotherapy, a hot new class of drugs that enlist the body’s defenses in the fight against tumors.

The latest research shared with 23,000 experts at Europe’s top oncology meeting shows how medicines that have already delivered durable benefits in metastatic disease can also work well at an earlier stage.

The findings promise to expand the market for established immuno-oncology (I-O) drugs from companies like Merck, Bristol-Myers Squibb and Roche, while opening up a window for relative latecomers such as AstraZeneca.

AstraZeneca stole much of the limelight at the European Society for Medical Oncology (ESMO) congress in Madrid after clinical trial results showed its I-O drug Imfinzi helped lung cancer patients with mid-stage disease.

Bristol-Myers, meanwhile, proved that Opdivo, which is already used widely in advanced cancer, can prevent relapses in melanoma patients if given straight after surgery. This earlier setting is known as adjuvant therapy.

The data on both drugs highlight how so-called PD-1 and PD-L1 drugs are moving down the treatment curve to earlier-stage disease.

“The aim is to help more and more patients in earlier phases of the disease, like in adjuvant therapy,” said ESMO President Fortunato Ciardiello.

“I think this will be a trend that will increase over the next few years, though we have to be cautious because we have to do the proper clinical trials to prove this in each case.”

I-O drugs are now being investigated in the adjuvant setting in a range of cancers, including lung, kidney and bladder, and even in the case of breast and head and neck cancers. By taking the brakes off the immune system and allowing the body’s natural killer cells to home in on tumors, immunotherapy offers a different approach to toxic chemotherapy, which causes collateral damage to healthy tissue.

It is not without side effects, some of which can be serious, but it is generally a kinder option.

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