Immunotherapy, one of the major developments in cancer science in recent years, is proving beneficial against a growing number of cancers, particularly “triple-negative cancer,” a particularly aggressive and resistant form of breast cancer.
Some of the world’s leading cancer specialists gathered in Barcelona, Spain, for the annual European Society for Medical Oncology (ESMO) Congress, a major meeting dedicated to the fight against cancer, where they highlighted this “revolutionary” treatment technique.
Immunotherapy no longer works on the cancer cell itself, but rather on stimulating the patient’s immune system to make it fight tumors.
At the ISMO conference, specialist doctors and researchers will highlight a treatment that has shown promising results for lung and skin cancer (melanoma), while improving long-term survival in a large number of other tumors.
This is the case, for example, with triple-negative breast cancer, a particularly aggressive type that affects about 9,000 women each year, often at a young age.
This disease is difficult to treat, especially since it does not respond to doses of estrogen or progesterone, which are the basis of other treatments commonly used for other forms of breast cancer.
However, immunotherapy combined with chemotherapy, a combination given before and after surgery, improved long-term survival in patients with triple-negative cancer, according to a study published Sunday.
According to the study results, the overall five-year survival rate was 86.6% in patients who received immunotherapy, and 81.7% in the placebo group.
Decreased risk of disease
This shows that “the use of immunotherapy makes it possible to increase the effectiveness of chemotherapy,” François-Clément Bidart, an oncologist at the Curie Institute in Paris, explained to AFP.
When this treatment is given before surgery, the chances of completely eliminating cancer cells before the operation are greater.
“We now expect fewer recurrences and therefore more treatments, which is the ultimate goal in oncology,” said Benjamin Bess, an oncologist at Gustave Roussy Hospital in southern Paris.
Michelle Borges Soler, 51, benefited from this treatment. She is now in remission from triple-negative breast cancer, which she was diagnosed with in November 2022. At the time, she was told, “It is advanced, fast and aggressive.”
“At first, the disease was not treatable,” she told AFP, but she is one of the first patients to be treated with immunotherapy for this type of tumor.
Combined with chemotherapy, the new treatment gave her “encouraging results,” and allowed her to undergo surgery in June 2023. Since January, she has not taken “any medication.”
“I think it may never happen again,” said Soler, who describes herself as an “eternal optimist.”
Unanswered questions
A similar improvement in overall survival was observed with preoperative immunotherapy, according to a study presented at the ISMO conference involving patients with muscle-invasive bladder cancer.
A study of locally advanced, high-risk cervical cancer, published Saturday, reached similar conclusions again: A combination of immunotherapy and chemotherapy showed an overall three-year survival rate of 82.6 percent for patients who benefited from the combination, compared with 74.8 percent for those who did not undergo immunotherapy.
“The main message from all these studies is that immunotherapy continues to deliver on its promise and offers hope for long-term survival for many patients with different types of cancer,” said Alessandra Corione Fontsedro, professor of oncology at the University of Fribourg.
But key questions remain unanswered. We need to understand why immunotherapy doesn’t work in some people, and why cancer recurs in patients who initially seemed to respond to treatment.
Side effects of immunotherapy, which vary in severity between patients, must also be taken into account.