"Immunotherapy is a bit of an umbrella term for many different types of medicine that help the immune system do its job and attack cancer," Marron noted. "For liver cancer — and many other types of cancer — immunotherapies are now the mainstay of treatment for people with advanced disease, meaning for patients in whom surgery is not a potential cure."
New approaches needed to tackle liver cancer
But the trial results so far suggest that the first two
sessions of immunotherapy administered before surgery effectively kill off
liver cancer tumors in about one-third of patients. And Marron predicts that
"nearly all the patients whose cancer was [already] dead when we cut it
out will remain cancer-free."
In addition, the team also identified some degree of immunotherapy-triggered benefit among the remaining patients.
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But Marron stressed that firm answers as to precisely which
liver cancer patients might be ideal immunotherapy candidates — and what might
predict long-term remission — awaits completion of his team's ongoing post-surgical
analysis.
The study findings were published online recently in The
Lancet Gastroenterology and Hepatology.
The impetus behind studies like this is that when it comes
to liver cancer treatment, "we need to do better." "If diagnosed
with liver cancer at an early stage, the five-year survival rate is 34%,"
she noted. "If the cancer has spread to surrounding tissues, the five-year
survival rate is 12%. If the cancer has spread to a distant part of the body,
the five-year survival rate is 3%."
But she said more and bigger studies will be needed to
determine how best to design immunotherapy treatment, which patients will truly
benefit, and whether the treatment really reduces the risk for recurrence and
death.
Foster, however, thinks he already has all the information
he needs.
"This was absolutely a no-brainer," he said.
"It was worth it. It was worth getting up at 5 o-clock every morning, and
driving into the city for two hours. And I would do it again in a heartbeat, if
I had to."
There's more about liver cancer and immunotherapy.
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