World-first double-combo of immunotherapy tested in aggressive breast cancer
Australian women with advanced breast cancer will have access to a world-first treatment combination to kickstart a cancer-fighting response in the immune system.
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Australian women with advanced breast cancer will have access to a world-first treatment combination to kickstart a cancer-fighting response in the immune system.
The aim is to turn aggressive breast cancer from being terminal and into a chronic disease.
The two new national clinical trials, led by Melbourne researchers, will double-up on blockbuster immunotherapy drugs that have seen success treating melanoma and lung cancer.
Lead researcher Professor Sherene Loi, from Peter McCallum Cancer Centre, said using immunotherapy in breast cancer was still an emerging idea.
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While these new treatments had been proven successful at treating cancers such as skin cancer and lung cancer, because these cancers were triggered by carcinogens of tobacco and UV light, breast cancer was different.
“The toxins in these cancers are clearly recognised by the body as foreign, so the immune system ramps up.
“But breast cancer isn’t like that. It doesn’t cause a strong immune response,” Prof Loi said.
“Ultimately we need to find ways to reactivate the immune system in breast cancer patients who relapse.”
Results released from a promising clinical trial last year in women with incurable triple negative breast cancer, showed that using Tecentriq — an immunotherapy previously used in lung cancer — could increase survival and slow growth of the cancer in a subset of patients with a particular immune signature.
Prof Loi said the results had spurred them to design the CHARIOT clinical trial, run through the Breast Cancer Trial Group, to further these exciting results.
The trial will recruit 35 women to receive two immunotherapy drugs, Opdivo and Yervoy, on top of standard chemotherapy.
“We think the disease is so aggressive that we really need to hit it hard at a time where potentially the immune system is still strong enough to respond,” she said.
“These drugs target the immune system in different ways, but they work together to ramp up the immune system.”
The second DIAmOND trial for 50 women with incurable Her2-positive breast cancer that has spread beyond the breast, will also be treated with the double combination of immunotherapy.
Prof Loi said while the bedrock therapy Herceptin meant early stage Her2-positive cancer was typically curable, most women — about 85 per cent — presented with advanced disease which could not be controlled with available treatments.
“We want to get long periods of time where the disease is under control, to turn it more into a chronic disease situation,” she said.
“If we can do that, it will buy them time for the next drug to come along. There is a lot of activity happening in this space.”