The results of a recent lung cancer therapy have shown significant improvement in the
patients' life expectancies. The therapy involved Nivolumab—one of a new PD-1/PD-L1 or
"checkpoint inhibitor" class of drugs. The
Nivolumab trial:
The trial, conducted in Europe and the US, was on patients who had advanced lung cancer and who had already tried other treatments.
People on standard therapy lived for another 9.4 months at this stage, but those taking Nivolumab lived for 12.2 months on average.
However, some patients did spectacularly well. Those whose tumours were producing high levels of PD-L1 lived for another 19.4 months.
Cancer cells can produce PD-L1—a protein that will stop a person's immune system from recognizing the cancer cell as a threat. This is one of the ways cancer is able to grow. What "checkpoint inhibitor" drugs do is stop cancer cells from turning off the immune system's response.
Lead researcher Dr Luis Paz-Ares, from the Hospital Universitario Doce de Octubre in Madrid, Spain, said: "[The results] mark a milestone in the development of new treatment options for lung cancer."
"Nivolumab is the first PD-1 inhibitor to show a significant improvement in overall survival in a phase III trial in non-squamous non-small cell lung cancer."
Nivolumab is not the only checkpoint inhibitor being tested. There have been a bunch of very
quick approvals by the FDA to begin testing on anti-PD-1 and PD-L1 therapies and this is a good thing. For one, the response to these therapies vary, depending on individuals and the more variations on this therapy,t he better chance that more people will be able to find one of them helpful. The second reason, and the more crass one too, is money. The early signs are that pharmaceutical companies will be
charging very high prices for these drugs.
Regardless, the important thing is that these drugs are getting tested in the hopes of extending people's lives. Science must progress even if we, as a society still struggle with old barbarisms.