Lung Cancer patients can see improved results with Immunotherapy along with Chemotherapy Before surgery.

Reduced risk of cancer deaths due to the addition of immunotherapy drug nivolumab to chemotherapy for patients with non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC). This addition has resulted in zero active cancer cells after the removal of the tumour in patients who received chemotherapy alone.

FREMONT, CA: The Federal Drug Administration (FDA) has approved the first immunotherapy/chemotherapy combination treatment for patients with operable NSCLC. This approval comes from the study led by the researchers at the Johns Hopkins Kimmel Cancer Centre and the Bloomberg Kimmel Institute for Cancer Immunotherapy.

Patrick Forde, principal investigator of the trial, co-director of the upper aerodigestive cancer division at the Johns Hopkins Kimmel Cancer Centre, and associate professor of oncology, says that in this trial they found the addition of nivolumab to standard neoadjuvant chemotherapy reduced the risk of recurrence of cancer or death by more than one third. The treatment, he says, was also associated with mostly improved outcomes of surgery, including less extensive surgery, less blood loss, and shorter time in the operating system.

Forde says that the standard treatment for resectable lung cancer to remove the tumour is surgery, but most patients experience lung cancer recurrence after surgery, and it’s mostly incurable. He goes on to say that when drugs like cisplatin or carboplatin are given either before or after surgery, patient survival improves by only five percent after 5 years. 358 patients with stage 1B to 3A resectable NSCLC were randomly assigned to receive platinum-doublet chemotherapy for three cycles, with or without 360 milligrams of the anti-PD-1 immunotherapy drug nivolumab, followed by surgery. Those who received combination therapy had a pathological complete response rate of 24 percent, compared to 2.2 percent for those who only received chemotherapy. The combination recipients also had better surgical outcomes and a 37 percent lower risk of cancer recurrence or death.

In an earlier study, lung cancer patients with operable tumours were given two doses of nivolumab for four weeks before surgery. Out of them, nine of the patients had a 90 percent or more reduction in the number of live cancer cells in the tumour.

Immunotherapy Plus Chemotherapy Before Surgery Improves Outcomes for Patients with Lung Cancer – India Education | Latest Education News | Global Educational News | Recent Educational News (indiaeducationdiary.in)