Drug breakthrough may help breast cancer patients

Treating patients who have a common form of breast cancer with immunotherapy, as well as chemotherapy, before and after surgery could be effective regardless of their age or if they have gone through the menopause, according to a study. sold under the brand name Keytruda, targets and blocks a specific protein on the surface of certain immune cells which then seek out and destroy the cancerous cells.

In England, it is offered to those with triple negative breast cancer, one of the most aggressive forms of the disease, which accounts for about 15 per cent of cases. However, recent findings from the Keynote-756 trial suggest it could be effective when used more widely.

Researchers explored the use of pembrolizumab on patients with early-stage breast cancer that is at high risk of recurring or spreading further, and that is oestrogen receptor positive( er positive) and HER2 negative.

According to cancer research UK, about 80 in 100 breast cancer diagnoses are ER positive. Keynote-756 has been running for eight years and comprises 1,278 patients with invasive duct al carcinoma( I DC ), meaningcancer had started to spread out of the milk ducts and into the surrounding breast tissues.

Patients were either treated with pembrolizumab and chemotherapy before and after surgery, or with a placebo.

Researchers measured the lack of cancer signs in tissue samples, also known as a pathological complete response (PCR) rate.

Some 24.3 percent of patients treated with pembrolizumab had no cancer cells remaining in the breast or lymph nodes compared with 15.6 per cent of patients treated with a placebo.