If medicine is progressing every day in medical practices and in hospital departments, its prospects are being written in the conference rooms of international medical congresses. The one that opens this weekend at ASCO (1), and whose whydoctor will report daily, will mark, without doubt, an important turning point in the treatment of cancers.
With immunotherapy, doctors and patients experience a real upheaval. In The Parisianwhich devotes its front page to the event, Professor Gilles Vassal, director of clinical research at Gustave-Roussy, is enthusiastic: “Immunotherapy allows effective treatments against very aggressive cancers, for which we only had few solutions.
This “radical change of approach”, says journalist Claudine Proust, is the culmination of a process initiated a long time ago by researchers around our immune system. Starting from the patient’s response to fight against the tumour. Indeed, the latter neutralizes our immune barrier, supposed to protect us against external aggressions.
Until now, to deal with these attacks, scientists tried to boost our defenses. But by overstretching the immune cells (lymphocytes), the latter “turned over” against our own body, thus causing autoimmune diseases.
With immunotherapy, explains Professor Gilles Vassal in the daily newspaper, “we found the molecules in question in this “lock” and we developed antibodies capable of unlocking the lymphocytes so that they go back on the attack. »
This concept has proven itself in several cancers: kidney, bladder, lung, ovary, and in melanoma. France, which holds a place of choice in this research, allows, within the framework of temporary authorizations for use (ATU) to patients in treatment failure to benefit from these major advances as of now.
(1) American Society of Clinical Oncology
