09/15/2024 – 16:55
Immunotherapy is one of the great advances of recent years in the field of oncology, a treatment that is demonstrating its effectiveness against a growing number of cancers, say experts gathered at a congress in Barcelona.
The annual congress of the European Society for Medical Oncology (ESMO) is a key event dedicated to the fight against cancer, and brings together the greatest international experts.
Immunotherapy is considered “revolutionary”, especially in cases such as “triple negative”, a particularly serious and resistant form of breast cancer.
This treatment no longer acts directly on the cancer cell, but stimulates the patient’s immune system to fight the tumors.
At Esmo, medical experts and researchers highlighted a treatment that has already shown promising results in lung and skin cancers (melanoma) and that improves long-term survival against many other tumors.
This is the case, for example, with triple-negative breast cancer (TNBC). Particularly aggressive, it affects around 9,000 women each year, often young women.
It is particularly difficult to treat, mainly because it does not respond to the administration of estrogen or progesterone, the basis of other treatments commonly used in other forms of breast cancer.
However, immunotherapy, combined with chemotherapy, a combination administered before and after surgery, has improved long-term survival in patients with triple-negative cancer, according to a study to be presented Sunday.
According to the study results, the overall five-year survival rate was 86.6% in patients who received immunotherapy and 81.7% in the placebo group.
– “Fewer relapses” –
This proves that “the use of immunotherapy makes it possible to increase the effectiveness of chemotherapy,” François-Clément Bidard, an oncologist at the Curie Institute in Paris, explained to AFP.
And when it is administered before surgery, the chances of completely eliminating tumor cells before surgery are greater.
“We now expect fewer relapses and therefore more cures, which is the ultimate goal in oncology,” says Benjamin Besse, a medical oncologist at Gustave-Roussy Hospital, south of Paris.
Michèle Borges-Soler, 51, benefited from this treatment. Today she is in remission from triple-negative breast cancer diagnosed in November 2022. “An advanced, fast-moving and aggressive cancer,” doctors said at the time.
“At first, it was not operable,” she told AFP. But the patient became one of the first to be treated with immunotherapy.
Combined with chemotherapy, the treatment gave “encouraging results” and made an operation possible in June 2023. Since January, she has not taken “any medication”.
“I think it’s possible that there will never be a relapse,” hopes this “eternal optimist.”
– Unanswered Questions –
A similar improvement in overall survival with administration of immunotherapy before surgery was seen in a study presented at Esmo of patients with muscle-invasive bladder cancer.
On Saturday, results from a study of high-risk, locally advanced cervical cancer also yielded similar conclusions: a combination of immunotherapy and chemotherapy showed a three-year overall survival rate of 82.6 percent in patients involved, compared with 74.8 percent in those who did not receive immunotherapy.
“The main message from all these studies is that immunotherapy continues to deliver on its promise and offers hope for long-term survival for many patients with different types of cancer,” said Alessandra Curioni-Fontecedro, professor of oncology at the University of Fribourg.
“In many cancers, we have seen that stimulating the immune system before surgery substantially improves survival,” said Jean-Yves Blay, president of Unicancer, an association of French cancer centers. He said this represents a “turning point” in cancer research.
However, important questions remain unanswered: why immunotherapy doesn’t work in some people and why certain cancers relapse in patients who initially seemed to respond to treatment.
The more or less serious side effects that immunotherapy can induce must also be considered before administering this treatment.
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