immunotherapy vs chemotherapy – Senator Medical AB

Importance of Body image for women (Breast Cancer Article)

admin — Mon, 19 Aug 2019 12:23:05 +0000

Body image in women with breast cancer using a scalp cooling system to reduce chemotherapy induced hair-loss

Background: Most women consider hair to be an important part of body image. Alopecia is an emotionally traumatic side effect for breast cancer patients undergoing adjuvant chemotherapy. The DigniCap Scalp Cooling System is the first scalp cooling system cleared by the US Food and Drug Administration to reduce the likelihood of chemotherapy induced alopecia.

Methods: Quality of Life (QOL) data were collected as part of a prospective clinical trial evaluating the clinical performance of scalp cooling in women with early stage BC receiving adjuvant chemotherapy.

The study’s primary endpoint was hair loss as evaluated by patient self-assessment. Treatment success was defined as ≤ 50% hair loss. QOL was evaluated by the EORTC-QLQ-BR23 (BR23) administered at baseline, last chemotherapy cycle, and one month later. For BR23, 4 response categories were collapsed to 2 categories (Not at all/A little bit and Quite a bit/Very much) for analysis. QOL was compared between those with success vs. failure of scalp cooling.

Results: 101 patients were evaluable for the primary endpoint: Success was seen in 67 (66.3%) pts. QOL at study entry was comparable between pts with scalp cooling success or failure for each item in the BR23 questionnaire. Results reported as percentages of patients in each group who answered either quite a bit or very much to body image-related questions on the BR23 questionnaire are displayed in Table 1.

Conclusions: Women with breast cancer using scalp cooling during chemotherapy who had hair preservation experienced improved quality of life, according to self-assessment of body image, compared to women who had significant hair loss.

Reference: Cancer Research Journal

Why immunotherapy is NOT effective for some patients with metastatic melanoma and kidney cancer?

admin — Mon, 05 Aug 2019 08:51:17 +0000

This new study may explain more

White blood cells known as B cells have been shown to be effective for predicting which cancer patients will respond to immune checkpoint blockade (ICB) therapy.

The results from this study will be presented at the AACR Annual Meeting 2019 in Atlanta.

The study, led by Jennifer Wargo, M.D., professor in the Surgical Oncology and Genomic Medicine, found that some B cells with unique characteristics predicted response and may be contributing mechanistically to the immune system’s response.

The B cells had activated effector phenotypes and were located within lymphoid formations found at the tumour site, known as tertiary lymphoid structures (TLS).

The researchers looked at samples from metastatic melanoma and kidney cancer patients who had received ICB as their initial treatment.

The B cells may be impacting the immune system’s response through secretion of antibodies and/or by processing and delivering antigens to white blood cell subtypes called T lymphocytes.

“This is an exciting and emerging area of study that appears to hold promise for more accurately understanding which patients are most likely to be treated effectively with ICB therapy, and it also could help us identify new therapeutic targets.” said Wargo. “We are able to demonstrate through single-cell RNA sequencing that switched memory B cells and plasma cells were significantly associated with ICB response in a cohort of metastatic melanoma.”

While cytotoxic T-cell markers, PD-L1 and mutational burden have been previously identified as biomarkers of response to ICB, there is a growing appreciation of B cells as biomarkers mediators of response, although B cells have also been linked to negative cancer outcomes.

“Whole transcriptomic analysis of the cohort of melanoma patients receiving ICB initially revealed that most differentially expressed genes by response were related to B cells,” added Wargo. “In further investigation of specific characteristics of B cells located within the tumour, we identified naive, class-switched and unswitched memory B cells, and plasma cell-like populations.”

Class-switch references a B cell’s ability to change production of an antibody from one class to another.

The team found higher frequencies of class-switched memory B and plasma-like cells in patients who responded to ICB.

Patients who did not respond to ICB had higher levels of naïve B cells which have not yet been activated for a designated purpose.

“We don’t have a complete understanding of how these B cells contribute to therapeutic response, but we and others are working on this, and we hope this research will stimulate additional study in this area,” concluded Wargo. “There is still much to learn and the strongest gains are made through collaboration. It is something we owe to our patients.”

Source: The University of Texas – MD Anderson Cancer Center

Credit: ecancer.org

Immunotherapy for cancer-simply explained

admin — Wed, 03 Apr 2019 08:15:22 +0000

“Immunotherapy for cancer” is a new treatment modality that aims to empower patient’s own immune system to fight against cancer.

Despite it initially looks, CANCER is actually a genetic disorder. There are several consecutive series of mutations which must happen in advance of a cancer cell develops.

Typically this requires 6 – 10 mutations in the cells which causes losing cancer regulation checkpoints in the process. Usually the process needs a long time, which should explain why most cancers appear in old ages and even after a long while from quitting the smoking or drinking alcohol.

Our immune system is usually capable of spotting a mutated cell and destroying it before it grows and mutates even further.

In other words, some mutations are simply too complicated for our immune system to be discovered and destroyed. The Immune system then needs an extra “booster”, to enhance their radar for spotting cancer cells. This are where immunotherapy drugs (like Nivolumab, Ipilimumab, Blincyto, etc.) come to the picture and work.

At the moment this is quite a new therapy method and grows increasingly fast (Nobel prize 2018 was about the same!). We as an experienced player in international level within oncology sector are very much interested to enhance permeability of these expensive molecules into cancer cells. This can save a lot by using lower dosage of immunotherapy medicines for having the same clinical outcome.

It can also potentially help to prevent cancer in high risk patient groups. Utilizing electricity and electroporation is something that might be considered as a route for such and we are welcoming international research centers to work hand in hand against cancer.

Having that said, we hope high, because with all these methods we might not be that far from curing cancer.