Researchers take aim at cancer drugs ’ toxic side effects

The patient was a success story, his advanced melanoma erased by a popular new cancer treatment. Known as immune checkpoint inhibitors, the drugs coax the immune system to seek and destroy cancer cells—and in this case, they “worked beautifully,” says Kerry Reynolds, an oncologist at Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH) who helped care for the man. But about a month after an infusion, without a melanoma cell detectable in his body, the 64-year-old was admitted to the hospital, gravely ill. The drugs were sending his immune system into overdrive, wreaking havoc on his colon and nervous system. Doctors struggled for more than 3 weeks to save him , but “he died of overwhelming toxicity,” Reynolds says. She was haunted by his story. “We felt so hopeless.” Before he died the man implored Reynolds to learn from his experience, and she promised she would. Soon after, in 2017, Reynolds founded the Severe Immunotherapy Complications Service at MGH, where immunologist and genomicist Alexandra-Chloé Villani took on a parallel research effort; together they aim to treat and study people with immune complications from these breakthrough cancer drugs. The program is now expanding—part of a larger push by scientists around the world. They are launching clinical trials to test treatments for the side effects, turning to computer algorithms to try to predict who’s at risk, and analyzing single cells to parse the biology of these vexing assaults. ...
Source: ScienceNOW - Category: Science Source Type: news