Some cancer patients respond extremely well on immunotherapy During a very long time. This is what doctors call the “prolonged response”. An analysis of 19 international studies conducted by the Institut Curie in collaboration with INSERM and Gustave Roussy and involving 11,640 patients made it possible to quantify the proportion of patients who obtain this prolonged response, regardless of the type of cancer. The results, published in the journal JCO Precision Oncology , show that 25% of patients are affected.
Prescribe immunotherapy at earlier stages
This work also points out that the earlier immunotherapy is given, the higher the likelihood of having a prolonged response.
“These prolonged responses represent what we wish to observe in all of our patients with metastatic cancer” explains Prof. Christophe le Tourneau, head of the Department of Early Clinical Trials at Institut Curie.
Real upheaval in the cancer care, immunotherapy has been one of the main lines of research at Institut Curie for several decades. However, immunotherapy is not the only treatment that produces prolonged responses. In fact, the meta-analysis showed that 11% of patients treated by chemotherapy or targeted therapy also benefit from a sustained response.
Institut Curie created the first cancer immunotherapy center in France. Currently 30 clinical trials are underway: researchers and doctors are trying to better understand how cancer cells escape the body’s defenses, and how to trigger an effective immune response against the various types of cancer.
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