Immunotherapy - Cancer Research UK

The slow dawn of the age of targeted therapies

Posted on November 2, 2012 by Henry Scowcroft

As NICE approves two new melanoma drugs, we look at how far we’ve come in developing ‘personalised’ cancer care.

This morning, the National Institute of Health and Clinical Excellence (NICE) reversed its original, preliminary decisions over two cutting-edge ‘targeted’ melanoma treatments – ipilimumab and vemurafenib.

Both drugs will now be available on the NHS to suitable patients throughout England, Wales and Northern Ireland.

(Scotland has its own drug approval body, the Scottish Medicines Consortium, which has so far given a ‘no’ to both drugs)

This is great news. It turns out that the manufacturers of both drugs have now provided sufficient information, and set up suitable discount schemes, to allow the drugs to be considered value for money on the NHS – essential in these straitened times. We hope they’ll resubmit this information to the Scottish regulators as soon as possible.

But how does this fit into the bigger picture of targeted therapies and personalised medicine?

We thought that in the light of this news, and of some recent critical pieces in the mainstream media, we’d take a look at the state-of-play regarding what many consider to be a new ‘era’ of cancer treatment.

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ASCO 2012: Is immunotherapy finally coming of age?

Posted on June 6, 2012 by Nell Barrie

Delegates at this year's ASCO

While the UK enjoyed the rather wet Jubilee celebrations this weekend, thousands of cancer experts gathered in Chicago for the world’s largest annual cancer conference, ASCO. Cancer Research UK’s Nell Barrie was there to hear about the latest treatment advances.

In this first of her series of reports from the conference, Nell discusses one of the hot topics of the weekend – immunotherapy.

On a beautiful sunny Saturday in Chicago, hundreds of cancer researchers were packed into a stuffy, darkened room to hear the news that everyone had been talking about.

Last year the buzz at America’s biggest cancer treatment conference was all about immunotherapy - treatments that boost the power of the body’s own immune system. And once again a new drug designed to help the body in the fight against cancer was hitting the headlines.

With the last few stragglers trickling in and desperately trying to find seats, the presentations began – and we weren’t disappointed. An early-stage clinical trial of an experimental drug called BMS-936558 clearly showed its potential power.

When given to 76 patients with non–small-cell lung cancer, 14 of them responded (18 per cent), a figure which rose to 27 per cent among patients with kidney cancer (9 of 33 patients) and 28 per cent among patients with melanoma (26 of 94 patients responded).

Although these are preliminary results, they’re impressive. Until now, the best response rate researchers and doctors have seen for immunotherapy treatments is a little more than 1 in 10 (10 per cent).

And to add to the buzz, it’s the first time immunotherapy has been shown to have a real benefit for lung cancer patients – people desperately in need of better treatments.

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Misleading reporting of the “wonder jab that will kill 90% of cancers”

Posted on April 10, 2012 by Kat Arney

Coverage of an anti-cancer "wonder jab" is over-hyped and misleading

Over the weekend you may have seen headlines announcing that a “‘Universal’ cancer vaccine” or “wonder jab” has been developed by Israeli researchers.

In fact, the story behind the headlines is about unpublished interim clinical trial results from just seven patients given ImMucin, a new vaccine targeting a protein called MUC1 which is found on the surface of many cancer cells.

We are concerned that some of the coverage of this story has been over-hyped and misleading – something that is particularly pertinent given the focus on responsible science and health reporting as part of the ongoing Leveson Inquiry (pdf).

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Podcast: Immunotherapy, plain packaging, a boost for trials, and bacon

Posted on January 24, 2012 by Kat Arney

Click on the logo to download the podcast

In this month’s podcast there’s good news for UK cancer trials, as our network of Experimental Cancer Medicine Centres gets a £35 million funding boost, and we take a look at the latest research in understanding why some breast cancers are resistant to treatment.

The clock is ticking for the tobacco industry, as there are just 100 days until tobacco displays are removed in supermarkets, so we find out why this legislation is so important in the fight against cancer.

The immune system protects us against infection by bacteria and viruses, but can it be harnessed to fight cancer? We take a look at how far we’ve come in understanding the immune system and its role in cancer, and find out about the latest progress in immunotherapy – using a patient’s own immune system to fight tumours.

Plus, we discuss reports that processed meat – including bacon – increases pancreatic cancer risk, and get a glimpse of what 2012 holds for some of our top researchers.

Listen now through the audio player below:

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Or click here to download the podcast as an mp3.

Also, the podcast is available on iTunes to subscribe and download for free.

Alternatively, go to the podcast page on our website, where you can hear the show directly through our own Flash player and explore previous shows in the archive. And there’s also a full transcript of the podcast available here.

We hope you enjoy it – please do let us know what you think of the podcast in the comments below, or email us at podcast@cancer.org.uk.

NCRI Cancer Conference – day two

Posted on November 8, 2011 by Henry Scowcroft

NCRI conference 2011 - Prof Mike Richards

The National Cancer Director shows us his stats

After yesterday’s talks, the first full day’s play at the NCRI Cancer Conference saw some excellent sessions on how the last decade of high-tech cancer research is beginning to affect how patients are treated.

Topics included drug resistance, national cancer statistics, the immune system, ‘stratified’ medicine, brain tumours and clinical trials.

Here’s how the day panned out.

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Immunology research is a Nobel cause

Posted on October 5, 2011 by Jo Owens

The discovery of dendritic cells has led to a Nobel Prize

It’s October, which means it’s time for the Nobel Prizes – the research equivalent of the Oscars, when the good and the great of scientific endeavour are honoured by the Nobel Foundation.

Two Cancer Research UK-funded scientists – Sir Paul Nurse and Sir Tim Hunt – are among the glittering list of past Nobel laureates, and we’re proud that our support has contributed to the work of several others.

From understanding how viruses can convert normal cells into cancer cells, to landmark discoveries about how cells multiply, their prize-winning work lives on in the progress we’re making against cancer today.

This year, the 2011 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine has been jointly awarded to three immunologists – Bruce Beutler, Jules Hoffmann and Ralph Steinman. Their discoveries of the key players in our immune system have given us insights that are literally game-changing for the treatment of cancer and other diseases.

We’ve blogged recently about harnessing our immune system to treat cancer. Without these fundamental discoveries by Beutler, Hoffman and Steinman, research like this simply wouldn’t be possible.

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In the news: re-tooling the body’s police force to beat leukaemia

Posted on August 17, 2011 by Oliver Childs

Police care (image courtesy of Wikimeda commons)

Our internal police force can be enhanced

Our immune system is our very own internal ‘police force’. It’s made up of disease-battling cells and proteins that travel through our bloodstream, searching out potentially harmful infections like the flu.

In the past couple decades, the immune system’s role in cancer has come into sharp focus, and a whole scientific field of cancer immunotherapy has developed.

Immunotherapy’s goal is compelling – to coordinate and re-tool the body’s police force so that it’s better equipped to seek out and destroy cancer cells. And we’ve written before about how immunotherapy is inching closer to being fully deployed in hospitals and clinics.

Last week, there was a flurry of coverage of a new immunotherapy treatment for leukaemia that “blows tumours away in weeks”.

Exciting headlines, but what does the science say on closer inspection?

We spoke with Dr Caetano Reis e Sousa, a Cancer Research UK immunotherapy expert, who was very upbeat about the research, but was also quick to caution that much larger trials are needed before we know for sure how effective and safe this experimental approach will prove to be.

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