New hope in fighting cancer

A HIGH-COST new combination therapy for Australia’s deadliest cancer has been approved for subsidy, potentially saving lung cancer patients $15,000 every three months.

The treatment, combining high-cost immunotherapy Keytruda with chemotherapy, has been shown to improve five-year survival rates in non small cell lung cancer patients from 5 per cent to almost 25 per cent.

Research by Dr Rina Hui, from Sydney’s Westmead Hospital, found combining chemotherapy with immunotherapy improved survival compared with either treatment alone.

Keytruda works best in patients with higher levels of the marker PD-L1 (programmed death-ligand), which suppresses the immune system and stops it fighting cancer cells.

But Dr Hui found combining the immunotherapy with chemotherapy in patients with low PD-L1 resulted in a dramatic increase in survival.

“The cancer tricks the immune system to present as normal and we take off the blindfold so the immune system realises it’s the bad guy,” she said.

Patients treated with Keytruda/chemo survived 22 months, compared with 11 months for those using chemo alone. But there are sideeffects from the treatment.

While the drug has been recommended for subsidy, the pharmaceutical company that makes it must negotiate a price with the government, a process that can take months.

The success of the treatment is leading a rethink in defining a cancer cure because many patients treated with Keytruda still have tiny amounts of cancer in their bodies but it does not appear to progress.