‘Remember, you’re not dying from cancer rather you’re living with it!’
Recently an annual meeting was held by the American Association for Cancer Research in Chicago which is clearly coming out with the story of the week.
According to their study, immunotherapy along with chemotherapy significantly improved survival for patients with certain forms of lung cancer when compared to chemotherapy alone. Not only was that study reported at the Chicago meeting,
but this report was also published in the New England Journal of Medicine, offering us vast details about the study along with its results.
Get All Know About Lung Cancer!!
Lung cancer is a type of cancer that begins in the lungs and leads to the death of human beings.
Lung cancer claims more lives each year than any others types of cancer.
Although people who smoke have the greatest risk of lung cancer, it can also occur in people who have never smoked.
Common Signs of Lung Cancer!!
- Coughing up with blood
- Shortness of breath
- Chest pain
- Hoarseness
- Losing weight without trying
- Bone pain
- A headache
Can Cancer Be Treated With Immunotherapy?
Let’s discuss-
- The drug pembrolizumab, one of the three immunotherapy medicines was used in the treatment of patients with advanced lung cancer.
- Previously, this drug has been approved for the treatment of patients with advanced lung cancer means when cancer has been shown to spread beyond the lung.
- However, it’s been limited to patients whose lung cancer tissue signifies a certain marker called PD-L1 which predicts a better chance of responding to immunotherapy.
- Unfortunately, this marker is found in a minority of those lung cancer patients who are probable candidates for treatment with pembrolizumab.
As Per New Studies…
- Lung cancer patients with non-small cell lung cancer who didn’t have biologic signals in their cancer tissue would probably respond much better to certain targeted therapies.
- They also had no prior treatment for their metastatic disease.
- If eligible for the trial, then the participants were randomly assigned to receive either standard treatment with two chemotherapy drugs cisplatin along with pemetrexed or with the immunotherapy drug, pembrolizumab.
How The Treatment Proceeds Among The Patient?
- 2 out of 3 patients were received chemotherapy and pembrolizumab.
- While 1/3 of the patients received just the chemotherapy.
- Although the patients who had a low level of markers also subjected to the therapies. It is important to create distinction about where higher levels of this particular immune marker are necessary before receiving pembrolizumab as the first-line treatment of metastatic lung cancer.
And The Outcomes Of Above-Mentioned Studies…
The main outcomes of the study are to show the overall survival of the patients who participated in the study.
- Out of 616 patients, a total of 607 patients were actually treated.
- Almost 70% of the patients treated with the combination of immunotherapy and chemotherapy were alive at one year.
- Half of the patients who received chemotherapy alone had died by 11.3 months.
That is—in a word—for sure a remarkable difference.
Immunotherapy- A Worship for Lung Cancer!!
We have learned from the studies to find out how many drugs in combination were best for the treatment of lung cancer. By moving forward in the era of immunotherapy,
we came to know immunotherapy in combination with chemotherapy may be a significant improvement. And furthermore, we should never forget that not everyone benefitted from the new treatment described in this research study.
We still have a long way to go.
