New hope for prostate cancer sufferers
PROSTATE cancer sufferers who had been given just weeks to live are surviving far longer, thanks to a drug that shrinks tumours by turbo-charging their immune system.
Over one third of men with a very advanced form of the cancer were given the drug pembrolizumab and are still alive after a year, according to a new study.
One in ten have stopped their cancer in its tracks, with tumours ceasing to grow.
The study, presented at the annual conference of the American Society of Oncology, is the first to show immunotherapy can help some men with prostate cancer.
Immunotherapy is expected to create a new generation of cancer drugs which harness the body’s own defences to destroy tumours.
The trial was led by a team at the Institute of Cancer Research, London, and the Royal Marsden NHS Foundation Trust.
Professor Johann de Bono, director of the drug development unit at the ICR, said: ‘I have these men who are basically dying, with weeks to months to live, who we gave this drug to and had complete responses. Their cancers shrunk, disappeared, with minimal cancer left on scans… Amazing results.’
Immunotherapy drugs work by stimulating the immune system to recognise and fight cancer, and are used to treat some advanced cancers, including lung and melanoma. The trial of 258 men with advanced prostate cancer found they lived much longer when treated with ‘checkpoint inhibitor’ pembrolizumab, which blocks the proteins which can prevent a cancer patient’s white blood cells killing cancer cells.
Around 38% of the men were still alive after a year and 11% did not see the cancer grow, the results show. While only 5% of men in the trial saw their tumours shrink or disappear, many of those had mutations in genes involved in repairing DNA in their tumours.
Two months ago, Vicky Phelan, one of the women at the centre of the Cervical Check controversy, began taking pembrolizumab, seeing it as her last hope in her fight against cervical cancer. She is the first cervical cancer patient in Ireland to access the drug.