Gathered in Barcelona (Spain) for Esmo, the annual congress of the European Society of Medical Oncology, a major event dedicated to the fight against cancer, the greatest international specialists are putting the spotlight on this therapeutic technique considered to be “revolutionary”.
Immunotherapy no longer involves acting on the cancer cell itself, but rather stimulating the patient’s immune system to help it fight against tumors.
Promising results
At Esmo, specialist doctors and researchers are highlighting a treatment that has already shown promising results for lung and skin cancers (melanoma) and improves long-term survival in many other tumors.
This is the case, for example, in triple negative breast cancer. Particularly aggressive, it affects around 9,000 women each year, often young.
It is particularly difficult to treat, especially because it does not respond to the administration of estrogen or progesterone, the basis of other treatments commonly used in other forms of breast cancer.
But immunotherapy combined with chemotherapy, a combination given before and after surgery, has improved long-term survival in patients with triple-negative cancer, according to a study to be presented Sunday.
According to the study results, the five-year overall survival rate was 86.6% in patients who received immunotherapy and 81.7% in the placebo group.
“Heal more”
This is proof that “the use of immunotherapy makes it possible to increase the effectiveness of chemotherapy,” explains François-Clément Bidard, oncologist at the Curie Institute in Paris.
And when given before surgery, there is a greater chance that tumor cells will be completely eliminated before the operation.
“We now expect fewer recurrences, and therefore more cures, which is the ultimate goal in oncology,” comments Benjamin Besse, a medical oncologist at Gustave-Roussy, south of Paris.
Michèle 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. “An advanced, fast-moving and aggressive cancer,” she was told at the time.
“It wasn’t operable at first,” she says. But she is one of the first patients to be treated with immunotherapy for this type of tumor.
Combined with chemotherapy, the treatment gives her “encouraging results” and makes an operation possible in June 2023. Since January, she has not taken “any medication”.
“I think it is possible that there will never be a repeat,” believes this “eternal optimist.”
About cervical cancer
A similar improvement in overall survival with immunotherapy given before surgery was seen in a study presented at Esmo involving patients with muscle-invasive bladder cancer.
On Saturday, the results of a study on high-risk locally advanced cervical cancer again reached similar conclusions: a combination of immunotherapy and chemotherapy showed an overall 3-year survival rate of 82.6% in affected patients compared to 74.8% for those who did not receive immunotherapy.
“The main message from all these studies is that immunotherapy continues to hold promise and offer hope for long-term survival for many patients with different types of cancer,” said Dr. Alessandra Curioni-Fontecedro, professor of oncology at the University of Fribourg.
But major questions remain unanswered. For example, we need to understand why immunotherapy does not work in some people. And why cancers recur in patients who initially seemed to respond to treatment.
