Taking new aim at cancer

You may have heard that former President Jimmy Carter’s melanoma, which had previously metastasized to his brain, has vanished. This news has cast light on a type of cancer treatment called immunotherapy, which helps the body’s own immune system fight cancer cells. The drug used for President Carter, pembrolizumab (Keytruda), is designed to block a cellular pathway known as PD-1, which hinders the immune system’s ability to attack melanoma cells. It was approved last year by the FDA and, so far, has proven to be successful in melanoma and other cancers. In clinical trials, tumors shrank in more than 30% of people who received the drug. President Carter also received radiation as part of his treatment (along with surgery to remove cancer that had spread to his liver). So it is difficult to say if pembrolizumab alone wiped out the tumors in his brain, or if it was the combination of the two treatments, says Dr. Patrick Ott, clinical director of both the Melanoma Center and the Center for Immuno-Oncology at Harvard-affiliated Dana-Farber Cancer Institute. Though pembrolizumab has been tested for treating melanoma, it has not yet been formally studied for the treatment of melanoma that has metastasized to the brain. “Melanoma in the brain is the hardest to treat. Most cancer drugs do not work in the brain to the same extent as other parts of the body because the brain has a barrier that prevents drugs from reaching it. So in this way, this type of treatment is quit...
Source: New Harvard Health Information - Category: Consumer Health News Authors: Tags: Cancer Drugs and Supplements Health Health care Source Type: news