A “gamechanger” immunotherapy drug that “melts away” tumours dramatically increases the chances of curing bowel cancer and may even replace the need for surgery, doctors have said. Pembrolizumab targets and blocks a specific protein on the surface of immune cells that then seek out and destroy cancer cells. Giving the drug before surgery instead of chemotherapy led to a huge increase in patients being declared cancer-free, a clinical trial found.
The results were presented at the annual meeting of the American Society of Clinical Oncology (ASCO), the world’s largest cancer conference. The study was led by University College London, University College London hospital, the Christie NHS Foundation Trust in Manchester, St James’s University hospital in Leeds, University hospital Southampton and the University of Glasgow. Prof Mark Saunders, a consultant clinical oncologist at the Christie, said the trial results were “really very exciting”.
“Immunotherapy prior to surgery could well become a ‘gamechanger’ for these patients with this type of cancer. Not only is the outcome better, but it saves patients from having more conventional chemotherapy, which often has more side-effects. “In the future, immunotherapy may even replace the need for surgery.
” Bowel cancer is the second leading cause of cancer-related deaths worldwide. There are more than 1.9m new cases and more than 900,000 deaths a year, according to the World Health Organization.
In the trial, fu.
