Cancer therapy takes a leap

Paris

More effective therapies, nanotechnology and even the prospect of vaccinating for certain tumours: battles may slowly be starting to turn in the never-ending war against cancer.

The second leading cause of death globally, cancer accounted for 9.6 million deaths, or one in six deaths, in 2018. Yesterday was World Cancer Day. Here is a look at some of the more promising developments in treating and preventing the disease:

Immunotherapy: Immunotherapy drugs, which prime the immune system to recognise and destroy cancerous cells, have shown huge promise against previously untreatable cancers over the past decade. But they vary greatly among different forms of cancer and only work in around a quarter of all patients.

A main focus of research now centres on “increasing the percentage of patients that respond well to immunotherapy”, according to Christophe Le Tourneau, director of clinical research at France’s Curie Institute.

One promising avenue is the development of antibodies capable of recognising a specific protein found in cancerous cells, “which would help the body to destroy those cells”, Axel Kahn, president of the League Against Cancer, said.

He said research had shown that administering medication or toxins helped destroy cancer cells after antibodies discover them.

Research is also ongoing into immunotherapy after chemotherapy, with the initial treatment creating mutations in cancer cells that may render them easier for the immune system to spot and hunt down. Another technique known as checkpoint inhibitor therapy has also shown promise.

When proteins contained within cancer cells bind with immune cells, they send an “off” signal to the rest of the immune system, disabling the body’s natural defences. Checkpoint inhibitor therapy blocks this binding, allowing killer immune T-cells to destroy the pathogen.

This technique has significantly improved prognoses for some melanomas and lung cancers and other trials are under way. Such treatment may offer also hope to the 10-15% of breast cancer sufferers who receive a “triple-negative” prognoses – tumours that contain neither hormonal nor HER2 protein receptors. HER2-positive breast cancer tends to grow more quickly than other forms but it is equally more treatable.

Triple-negative breast cancer is “usually more aggressive but the treatment options available today are not sufficiently effective”, according to the Arc Foundation cancer research centre near Paris.

One study with the drug durvalumab published this month in Nature Medicine showed that the antibody was somewhat effective at shutting off tumours’ ability to evade the immune system.

Vaccinate for tumours?

Trials are also under way exploring the efficacy of certain candidate vaccines that can help treat tumours. The French biotech firm, Transgene, is developing a treatment combining immunotherapy and a viral vector vaccine – a modified virus that delivers anticancer instructions to the body. A similar trial is under way

Immunotherapy drugs have shown huge promise against previously untreatable cancers over past decade.

to treat cancer of the ear, nose or throat. The Oncopole Toulouse cancer treatment centre, conducting the research, said the treatment acts as a kind of “facial recognition service” for the immune system to detect cancerous cells and learn how to destroy them.

Predicting effective treatment: Analysing the structure and the genetic make-up of cancer plays a major role not only in prognosis – but also in what treatment options are available. Better understanding of mutations in cancer cells, as well as how immune cells behave, are helping doctors make ever-more accurate treatment choices.

Nanotechnology:

Another area of interest is use of nanocapsules – microscopic coatings of metal or fat on drug molecules. The idea is to better distribute medicine around the body by allowing it to “go directly into tumour cells”. –