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.
In the trial, funded by Merck Sharp and Dohme and sponsored by University College London, researchers recruited 32 patients with stage two or three bowel cancer and a certain genetic profile (MMR deficient/MSI-High bowel cancer) from five hospitals in the UK.
About 15 percent of patients with stage two or three bowel cancer have this particular genetic makeup.
Patients were given nine weeks of pembrolizumab, also known as Keytruda, before surgery instead of the usual treatment of chemotherapy and surgery, then monitored over time.
Results show 59 percent of patients had no signs of cancer after treatment with pembrolizumab, with any cancer in the remaining 41 percent of patients removed during surgery.
Dr Marnix Jansen, a clinician scientist at the UCL Cancer Institute, said more work needed to be done to assess pembrolizumab before it could be considered standard treatment.
Lynch Syndrome Ireland 