A new era in the fight against cancer is on the horizon and it got some 30,000 cancer doctors and researchers excited at the latest American Society Of Clinical Oncology meeting held in the United States earlier this month.
Among the attendees was local oncologist Ang Peng Tiam, who said that the buzzword resounding in the colossal halls of the event was "immunotherapy".
To put it simply, this strategy makes use of a patient's own immune cells to attack cancer.
Even before the meeting, there was great expectation that there would be a major breakthrough in this area, said Dr Ang, who is in private practice.
Among the highlights was the presentation of results from a phase-three trial that compared an immunotherapy drug, called nivolumab, with a conventional chemotherapy drug, docetaxel, in patients with non-small cell lung cancer, said Dr Elaine Lim, a senior consultant at the department of medical oncology at the National Cancer Centre, Singapore (NCCS).
These patients had failed to respond to standard first-line chemotherapy.
Each trial showed that those who received the immunotherapy drug lived an average of three months longer than those who received chemotherapy, said Dr Lim.
http://www.straitstimes.com/singapore/health/turning-the-immune-system-on-cancer
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