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Published: 06 June 2023
The annual conference of the American Society of Clinical Oncology, the leading forum for cancer specialists from all over the world, concluded on Tuesday in Chicago after highlighting a series of positive developments in the treatment of cancer patients.
Edited by| Paul Mitchel
Health section - CJ journalist
Washington – June,6,2023
It turned out that taking a pill (sometimes with chemotherapy) daily contributed to reducing the risk of death from a type of lung cancer by half, as shown by the "amazing" results of clinical trials presented on Sunday at the conference and caused a great stir.
The AstraZeneca pharmaceutical group has developed the drug "osimertinib", which is given to people with a certain type of lung cancer called non-small cell lung cancer that shows some kind of mutation.
These mutations (epidermal growth factor receptor) affect 10 to 25 percent of lung cancer patients in the United States and Europe and 30 to 40 percent in Asia.
The clinical trial involved about 680 participants at an early stage of the disease (stages 1B to 3A) in more than 20 countries.
The patients first had to undergo surgery to remove the tumor,then half of the patients were given the treatment daily, while the other half took a placebo.
It turned out that those who took the treatment had a reduced risk of death by 51 percent compared to patients who took a placebo, and after five years 88 percent of the patients who took the treatment remained alive, compared to seven percent of those who took a placebo.
Roy Herbst of Yale University, who led the presentation of the results in Chicago, said: "These data are amazing.
He pointed out at a press conference that the drug helps "prevent the spread of the disease to the brain, liver and bones," pointing out the possibility of surgery for a third of cases of non-small cell lung cancer when diagnosed.
Nathan Bennell of the Cleveland Clinic Foundation, who was not involved in the study, said, "it's hard to point out how significant these results are.
"We have entered the era of diagnostic treatments for patients in the early stages and the page of one treatment for all should be closed," he said, meaning chemotherapy.
"Ozimertinib" is mainly licensed in dozens of countries and was given to about 700 thousand people, as stated in a statement to "AstraZeneca".
It was approved in the United States in 2020 based on previous data that showed an improvement in the survival of patients who recovered from the disease, that is, the time they lived without cancer recurrence.
Roy Herbst explained that the doctors had not all approved the treatment yet and were waiting for the data related to the global survival rate that was presented the day before yesterday.
He stressed the need to "screen patients" to see if they show the human growth factor receptor mutation, "otherwise it is difficult to subject them to this new treatment".
He explained that" ozimertinib", which targets the human growth factor receptor, causes side effects such as severe fatigue, redness of the skin or diarrhea.
"In this type of disease, for which therapeutic developments are a long-awaited event, a glimmer of great hope emerges,"said Iris poporte of the French union against cancer.
Muriel Dahan, head of research and development at the French Federation of cancer centers, stressed that "what has been achieved should change the approved practices and prompt the need for systematic testing for the mutation (EGFR) if the results of the study are confirmed".
The treatment of "furacidinib" contributed to improving the average survival in patients with glioma, as shown by new data for a Phase III clinical trial presented by the French laboratory "Servier".
The drug, taken daily by mouth, acts on a molecule that stops the activity of an enzyme responsible for the development of some types of brain cancers that are difficult to treat.
Patrick Terras, vice president in charge of innovative products for advanced oncology at Servier, said, "limited therapeutic progress has been recorded in relation to brain tumors over the past 20 years," adding, "thanks to the targeted therapy we have devised, the cancer did not progress in patients for 27.7 months compared to 11.1 months for those who received a placebo.
Fabrice Andre, director of research at France's Gustave - Roussy Cancer Centre, which is the first cancer-fighting institution in Europe, said: "this specific treatment holds out hope for a disease for which no treatments have been available until today.
A treatment tested in women with early-stage breast cancer has shown a 25 percent reduction in the risk of recurrence, according to preliminary results of a large clinical trial.
The "ribosclip" therapy (created by Novartis) is mainly used (with hormone therapy) to fight the most common types of breast cancer ("HR+"," HR2") at an advanced stage of the disease and has been tested in women with early-stage cancer.
The therapy targets two types of protein ("CDK6"and" CDK4") that affect the growth of cancer cells.
For cervical cancer in its early stages and with a limited risk of progression, a clinical study at the third stage showed that only hysterectomy does not lead to recurrence of the disease more often than hysterectomy with extensive removal of the cervix and part of the vagina, and this result holds promises to improve the quality of life for women undergoing similar operations.
Treatment with paired antibodies, which is like a small bomb of chemotherapy exploding in a tumor, has shown a significant improvement in the survival rate in women with types of ovarian cancer in which the five-year survival rate is less than 20 percent, while it recurs most commonly, as shown by Phase III clinical trials.
Christophe Le Tourneau, head of the Department of early clinical trials at the Paris-based Curie Institute, stressed that "talk about therapeutic vaccines is growing, while the number of trials being conducted is currently increasing, with significant technological progress recorded in this area".
Many preliminary studies are focusing on this new weapon against lung, ENT, glioblastoma and HPV, which causes many types of cancers.
The Korean Institute presented a study on a therapeutic vaccine against the "human papillomavirus 16" in anogenital cancers, in addition to an experiment on vaccines created by the biotech company "transgen" through an individual sequence of tumors and using one of the artificial intelligence tools in ENT cancers.
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