Drug that can cure the killer cancer triggered by pregnancy
A BREAKTHROUGH drug can cure a deadly cancer caused by pregnancy, British researchers have found.
Three out of four women with a rare gestational cancer have gone into remission after being treated at Charing Cross Hospital in London in a landmark trial.
Melody Ransome, one of the three women cured by the treatment, said she had started to put her affairs in order before she was given the drug.
‘I thought it was the end for me,’ the mother-of-two said. ‘Nothing was working and I thought I was about to say my goodbyes.’
But the 44-year-old was offered a place on a trial for immunotherapy drug pembrolizumab, and two months later she was in remission. Two and a half years on, she is cancerfree and thriving.
The pilot study by Imperial College London shows the drug can cure women who have no other options left. Two other unnamed women aged 37 and 47 also survived the aggressive cancer after they stopped responding to other treatments.
Cancerous gestational trophoblastic disease, known as GTD, affects one in 50,000 pregnancies – about 15 women a year. For most it is treatable with chemotherapy, but for about 5 per cent it simply does not work and the women die.
The breakthrough, published in the Lancet medical journal, gives hope to these women for the first time.
The disease occurs when cells that create the placenta mutate and form tumours in the womb. They can then spread to other parts of the body, either appearing during pregnancy or after the child is born.
Study leader Professor Michael Seckl said: ‘These are landmark findings that have implications on how we treat the disease in the UK and around the world.
‘We have been able to show for the first time that immunotherapy may be used to cure patients of cancerous GTD.’
Mrs Ransome, mother to Megan, 11, and Dylan, eight, was diagnosed in September 2012, two and a half years after she had given birth to her son. ‘I was in the kitchen and I had a seizure,’ said Mrs Ransome. ‘I just collapsed. I didn’t go to the doctor, but the next morning I felt a bulge sticking out of my neck.’
The IT worker decided to have it checked, and scans revealed tumours had already spread from her uterus to her liver, kidney, pancreas, lungs and brain.
Over the next three years she went through 13 rounds of chemotherapy, two stem cell transplants which nearly killed her, and major lung surgery.
In April 2015 she decided to call it a day part-way through another chemotherapy cycle.
‘I just had to stop,’ she said. ‘I thought, “This is the end of me”.’ She started to prepare to say goodbye to her children.
‘But then the hospital called to say they were trialling this new drug and would I like to take part,’ she said.
‘I had the first treatment at the beginning of May, and it was a walk in the park compared to chemotherapy. In July I was in remission. It was crazy. After two months of this amazing drug I was clear. They kept me for a bit longer, just to make sure, but I had my last treatment on October 19, 2015, and I haven’t had another treatment since.’
Pembrolizumab, which is given by drip every three weeks, works by harnessing the immune system to attack tumours. It has been available for skin cancer on the NHS for two years and lung cancer since May, but the new trial shows it is also remarkably effective with other cancers.
Following the findings, NHS England has agreed provisional funding to treat GTD with pembrolizumab for two years at Charing Cross and Sheffield Teaching Hospitals.
Mrs Ransome, who has since started a new career teaching craft to children, said: ‘Every day I wake up and I think, “I’m still here, I’m blessed, what can I do today?” ’
‘After two months I was clear’