Follow
According to what doctors reported on Monday, it seems that immune therapy drugs might completely transform the usual treatment for lung cancer. Moreover, it might even give the patients a few more years of life. It seems that the only condition for this therapy to work is to treat cancer patients before they have surgery. This will melt away the tumor while also limiting or even stopping it from spreading. In the past, certain combinations of immunotherapy drugs have helped patients get off the standard but more toxic chemotherapy and added extra years of life.
Experts agree that this impressive discovery might work on all lung cancer patients, as they should receive immunotherapy before undergoing surgery. This is a huge progress that will certainly help lung cancer patients a lot more. It’s worth noting that immunotherapy works by helping the body’s immune system fight off cancer. It employs a variety of different methods to do so among which are boosting the activity of the immune system or targeting tumors with engineered immune system proteins. They also include a special class of drugs that seem to have stopped former President Jimmy Carter’s melanoma.
Immunotherapy might be the key against lung cancer
Lung cancer is the number one cause of cancer death in the entire world, including the United States. The New England Journal of Medicine has recently published these impressive new results in a study. It seems that the more creative use of these miraculous drugs can help fight off lung cancer too.
For the study, a team of researchers treated 20 cancer patients with one of these drugs. Then, they underwent the surgery they needed for their type of the disease, lung cancer. About 1 year later, 16 of the patients were alive and well, and they didn’t suffer from cancer anymore. For two more people the cancer returned but after extra treatment, they were healthy. The remaining two people died, one of cancer, and the other of an unrelated head injury. So, 18 of the initial patients were still alive at the end of the experiment, proving how useful these drugs could prove.
Image source: defense.gov
