This post originally appeared on Cancer Research Catalyst, the official blog of the American Association of Cancer Research. It was originally published Nov. 15, 2016. By Karen Honey, PhD On Thursday, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) announced that it had approved expanding the use of the immunotherapeutic nivolumab (Opdivo) to include the treatment … Read more
Combination therapy, the use of more than one type of therapy in treating a patient, is a hallmark of cancer treatment. The complexity of the disease – its tendency to spread beyond its original site and become resistant to certain drugs, and its genetic diversity – underscores the need for a variety of approaches to … Read more
The immunotherapy drug pembrolizumab (Keytruda) is the first therapy of any kind to improve survival in patients whose metastatic bladder cancer worsened after treatment with platinum-based chemotherapy. Keytruda proved so much better than chemotherapy in this “second-line” use that an international clinical trial was halted when the advantage became apparent. “This is very good news; … Read more
Keeping up with progress in the field of cancer immunotherapy requires paying close attention. The number of approved drugs that help the body’s immune system fight cancer continues to grow, as does the list of different cancers in which immunotherapy is proving effective – in some cases yielding dramatically longer-lasting benefits than standard chemotherapy. A … Read more
When Emily Coughlin complained of a sore knee in May 2009, doctors initially suspected Lyme disease. After antibiotics failed to relieve the pain, the girl, who was just shy of her fourth birthday, was diagnosed with neuroblastoma, a cancer that begins in nerve cells outside the brain and usually affects children under 6. Though rare … Read more
Traditionally, the war on cancer has been waged from the outside in, with therapies such as surgery, radiation, and drugs entering the body from external sources. For more than 100 years, however, a notion has persisted that the most formidable tool against cancer may come from within: the immune system. The immune system is the … Read more
As one of the hottest topics in cancer research today, immunotherapy took center stage at the 2016 American Society of Clinical Oncology meeting in Chicago. Harold J. Burstein, MD, PhD, a breast oncologist in the Susan F. Smith Center for Women’s Cancers at Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, recently sat down with other oncologists to break down … Read more
This post originally appeared on HuffPost Impact. By Joan Lucca, RN, MSN Nearly four decades ago, I became a nurse and dedicated my life’s work to the care and comfort of patients. The ‘70s was a decade of change and opportunity as doors began to open for women in emerging science and technical fields. At … Read more
Colorectal cancer is the third most common cancer diagnosed in women and men in the United States. While surgery and chemotherapy are the mainstays of treatment for colorectal cancer, some patients with the disease can be treated with immunotherapy. What is immunotherapy? Immunotherapy harnesses the individual’s immune defenses to fight cancer. In the case of … Read more
Historically, brain tumors have been some of the most challenging types of cancers. A protective barrier around the brain—called the “blood-brain barrier”—can prevent cancer treatments from reaching the tumor. Recently, increased interest in immunotherapy has given new hope to getting through this barrier. “We know the immune system can get into the brain to fight … Read more
Although they may seem like foreign invaders, cancer cells develop out of normal body cells and tissues. Over a period of years, damage to the DNA of healthy cells disrupts their orderly growth, leading to the formation of malignant tumors. Cancer cells may contain thousands of mutations — alterations in their genetic code — but … Read more
The last two years have been very exciting for blood cancer research; many new targeted therapies and immunotherapies are improving treatment outcomes for patients with lymphoma, leukemia and multiple myeloma. “We’re starting to see a lot of hematologic malignancies benefit from immunotherapy,” says Irene Ghobrial, MD. “The excitement is there for so many trials and … Read more
Medically reviewed by Gordon Freeman, PhD New drugs that stimulate the patient’s immune system to attack tumors have achieved some dramatic and long-lasting benefits in several forms of cancer. A few drugs are already approved for wide use and many more are in the research pipeline. Because these immunotherapy agents work differently than chemotherapy, the … Read more
Since the early 2000s, when Dana-Farber scientists discovered that many cancer cells carry “checkpoint” proteins that ward off an immune system attack on tumors, a great deal of research has focused on the development and testing of agents capable of blocking those proteins. In many patients, such agents have sent cancers into long-term remissions. A checkpoint … Read more
Former President Jimmy Carter’s announcement earlier this week that he is free of the melanoma that had spread to his liver and brain may be the highest-profile example yet of the promise of a new form of cancer treatment that unleashes an immune system attack on the disease. Carter, 91, was treated with radiation therapy … Read more
The year 2015 marked a milestone in the treatment of lung cancer, with two new immunotherapy drugs approved for patients with advanced disease, bringing a new approach to this hard-to-treat cancer. Several other immunotherapy agents are also moving forward in clinical trials. In the past few years, scientists have found ways to disable the molecular … Read more
An immune checkpoint inhibitor is a drug that unleashes an immune system attack on cancer cells. Often made of antibodies, checkpoint inhibitors act on the immune system, therefore such drugs are known as immunotherapies. How do checkpoint inhibitors work? Checkpoint inhibitors seek to overcome one of cancer’s main defenses against an immune system attack. Immune … Read more
Any treatment that uses elements of the body’s immune system to fight cancer is considered cancer immunotherapy. In recent years, as research has revealed many of the basic workings of the immune system and how the immune system interacts with tumor cells, scientists have developed, tested, and demonstrated the effectiveness of an array of immunotherapy … Read more
Eagerly awaited new data from trials of immunotherapy drugs, vaccines to treat brain tumors, and improved treatments for blood cancers sparked waves of optimism at the year’s biggest cancer meeting. The 2015 annual meeting of the American Society of Clinical Oncology (ASCO) drew about 30,000 cancer specialists to Chicago May 29 – June 2. Immunotherapy, … Read more
Immunology is one of the most promising areas of cancer treatment today. Immunotherapy drugs, which use the patient’s own immune system to fight cancer cells, have been effective in treating several forms of the disease, including melanoma, prostate cancer, Hodgkin lymphoma, and certain types of brain tumors. The immune system has natural stopping points when … Read more