Posted on 06/08/2024 7:49:22 PM PDT by ConservativeMind
Immunotherapy before surgery for patients with metastatic melanoma appears to be especially successful. Some 59% of patients respond so well to this therapy that adjuvant treatment is no longer needed, according to the results of the NADINA study.
Standard treatment for patients with metastatic skin cancer (melanoma stage III) consists of the removal of local lymph nodes, followed by a year of adjuvant treatment with immunotherapy or targeted therapy.
"Despite that, we still see disease recurrence within three to five years in nearly half of these patients," Blank explains.
The study showed neoadjuvant immunotherapy could induce a stronger and broader immune response against the tumor.
423 patients were randomized to two groups: the first group received two immunotherapy treatments with ipilimumab and nivolumab, followed by surgery. The second group received standard treatment involving surgery followed by 12 rounds of immunotherapy with nivolumab.
"In 59% of patients who had received immunotherapy before surgery, the tumor was nearly entirely or completely gone, which meant that they did not require additional treatment." Even people who did not respond well to the therapy and had an unfavorable prognosis benefited from the therapy.
The effects of the treatment become apparent quickly. After one year, almost 84% of patients who had received neoadjuvant treatment were still tumor-free, compared to 57% of the group receiving standard treatment.
Blank says, "Patients whose tumors were nearly entirely or completely gone, saw even better results; 95% remained tumor-free, after only six months of treatment."
In all, 76% of patients whose tumors were only partially gone were still tumor-free one year after the start of their treatment, compared to 57% of patients who did not respond well to neoadjuvant therapy.
Besides a greater chance of tumor-free survival, most patients were able to cut down their treatment time to only six weeks.
(Excerpt) Read more at medicalxpress.com ...
Having a target for your cells to attack appears necessary, rather than having the immunotherapy later, when your body has a much harder time finding the bad thing it is supposed to be attacking.
Thirty years ago we were using BCG injected directly into sarcoid tumors of horses and the adjuvant stimulated immunity and removal of the sarcoids. BCG and cimetidine removed melanomas in horses also. Koch reported in the 1890’s that an adjuvant such as BCG stimulated immunity and removed tumors in some cases. I performed a literature review on BCG for a molecular virology class that found that BCG was used effectively by German microbiologists in the 1890’s.
Some of these new cancer treatments are superior to chemotherapy alone but they still tend the be non-specific.
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