New drug could help people with advanced cancers

A NEW “killer” immunotherapy treatment is showing early promise in attacking cancers that are hard to treat.

Researchers at the Institute of Cancer Research, London, and the Royal Marsden NHS Foundation Trust have been trialling the new drug, known as AFM24.

It has shown signs of effectiveness in a third of patients with a range of advanced cancers that had stopped responding to treatment, including bowel, lung and pancreatic cancers.

AFM24 redirects the body’s own natural killer immune cells to kill tumour cells, without having to go through the complex process of re-engineering a patient’s own cells, known as CAR-T cell therapy.

The results of the new study – a phase I trial on 24 patients which is ongoing – are being presented on Monday at the American Association for Cancer Research conference in New Orleans.

Experts hope the immunotherapy could, in future, work against a range of cancer tumours that continue to grow despite treatment.

They also believe the new treatment has the potential to be safer and less complex than cell therapies like CAR-T, and might work against a wider range of cancer types.

The trial has been funded by the drug’s manufacturer Affimed N.V. and is testing the drug’s safety and what dose should be given, as well as its effectiveness in tackling tumours positive for EGFR – a key protein involved in cancer growth.

A third of patients on the trial (eight out of 24) responded to the immunotherapy and saw their cancers stop growing. These trials often include people who have run out of other options.

Two patients with bowel cancer and one with lung cancer who received the immunotherapy saw their cancer shrink or stop growing for more than three months.

AFM24, which is administered intravenously, was generally well tolerated by patients.