Drug prolongs survival rate for advance-stage cancer patients

tions – Opdivo and Yervoy, both made by Bristol-Myers Squibb – to treat newly diagnosed patients with advanced non-small cell lung cancer with a high number of mutations in their tumors.

The patients experienced a significantly longer period during which their disease did not worsen, compared with people who received only chemotherapy, said Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center oncologist Matthew Hellman, who led the study.

He said the results established the double-immunotherapy combination as a first-line treatment for patients with a high “tumor mutational burden,” but that it was too early to know whether the treatment leads to longer survival. And he said the trial showed that “tumor mutational burden” is a reliable way to predict who will benefit from the medications.

Another study published Monday used immunotherapy in a different way – for patients with early-stage lung cancer. Researchers at Johns Hopkins and Memorial Sloan Kettering gave patients two doses of Opdivo – the first a month before surgery, the second two weeks before the operation – to try to stimulate anti-tumor activity and reduce the risk of relapse.

Nine of the 20 patients who got Opdivo had a “major pathologic response,” the researchers said. That means that the tumors removed in surgery had at least 10 percent fewer cancer cells than they did before treatment.

Drew Pardoll, director of Hopkins’ Bloomberg-Kimmel Institute for Cancer Immunotherapy, said that it is too early to know whether the findings will translate into longer survival. But if future studies show that, he added, then immunotherapy might be used to augment or even replace chemo typically given before surgery.