Immunotherapy against breast cancer

The first trials of a new approach to immunotherapy for triple-negative breast cancer have been successful

Marina Astvatsaturyan, Echo of Moscow

Encouraging news about prolonging the life of patients with aggressive breast cancer as a result of immunotherapy has been published in the New England Journal of Medicine (Schmid et al., Atezolizumab and Nab-Paclitaxel in Advanced Triple-Negative Breast Cancer) and presented at the last Congress of the European Society for Medical Oncology 2018 Congress in Munich.

The study was conducted by specialists from Queen Mary University of London (Queen Mary University of London) and St. Bartholomew's Hospital, using a combination of immunotherapy with chemotherapy in such a way that the body's immune system was directed to attack a previously made vulnerable three times negative breast cancer. According to the observations of scientists, this extended survival by 10 months, and in addition reduced the likelihood of death or the progress of the disease by almost 40 percent.

Triple negative breast cancer often affects women aged 40 to 55 years. Standard treatment involves chemotherapy, to which most patients quickly become resistant. If the disease spreads to other organs, the survival rate is from 12 to 15 months.

In the method described by British scientists, standard weekly chemotherapy is combined with the immunotherapy drug atezolizumab, which is used every two weeks. The combination works so that chemotherapy gives some, relatively speaking, roughness to the surface of cancer cells, which contributes to their better recognition by the immune system as a foreign object and subsequent destruction.

According to the head of the study, Peter Schmid, professor of oncology at Queen Mary University of London and St. Bartholomew's Hospital, who leads the press release of Queen Mary University of London First immunotherapy success for triple-negative breast cancer, "these results are a huge step forward. We have changed the course of treatment of thrice-negative breast cancer, showing that immune therapy has a significant advantage in terms of survival. With a combined approach, we used chemotherapy to remove the tumor's immune-protective cover, making cancer cells available to the patient's own immune system."

Thanks to the encouraging results obtained, a new treatment method for this aggressive breast cancer is currently being considered by health authorities and, possibly, it will receive approval from the National Health Service of England (NHS) in the near future. So far, immunotherapy is being offered to patients at St. Bartholomew's Hospital with triple-negative breast cancer as part of ongoing clinical trials.

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