A major hospital has announced that pioneering cancer trials are producing “incredibly remarkable” results, with seriously ill patients achieving “remission” for months and years.
The Christie NHS Foundation Trust in Manchester said its experimental work on blood cancers such as myeloma is seeing the vast majority of patients respond to treatment, reports Al-Rai daily.
Currently, the Christie NHS Foundation Trust is overseeing around 30 clinical trials underway for leukemia, including five for multiple myeloma, a disease that develops from plasma cells in the bone marrow.
Many of the patients participating in the trials had exhausted other available treatment options, or some had very few options left, which makes the results all the more surprising.
Dr. Emma Searle, consultant hematologist at Christie’s, points out that a group of new immunotherapy drugs, which are so experimental that they don’t have a name yet, have shown that some patients, such as those with multiple myeloma, see their cancer rates drop to unprecedented levels. can be discovered.
She went on to ssay: “The results of this type of experiment, using drugs that enable the immune system to see and attack myeloma, are incredibly impressive. With medication alone, we are seeing responses in more than two-thirds of patients who are left with no standard treatment options. And when the drugs are used together…we see responses in more than 90 percent of patients.”
She said immunotherapy drugs, which are already used in some other types of cancer, would “completely” change the face of leukemia treatment.
Dr. Searle continued, “These drugs represent a huge breakthrough in the treatment of this type of cancer, allowing patients who do not have standard treatment options to achieve remission, in many cases for months or years. When used alone, the drugs produce remission that lasts 1 to 2 years in most patients. And when used with other multiple myeloma drugs, responses and the effect on life expectancy are likely to be longer.”
Dr. Searle said she hadn’t expected immunotherapy to work so well for leukemia, adding, “These are really impressive results.”
Leukemia can be difficult to control, and paramedics often find patients in very serious condition because the entire immune system is affected.
Multiple myeloma patients used to survive three to five years after diagnosis, although the most recent data indicate that half of patients are still alive after 10 years.
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