Immunotherapy is proving to be one of the most promising fields in cancer treatment and offers continuous advances. In this sense, the Congress of the European Society of Medical Oncology (ESMO) Barcelona is the perfect date to present many of these novelties. As stated by Josep Tabernero, president of ESMO, director of the VHIO and head of the Oncology Service of the Vall d’Hebron University Hospital, this “will be a congress where many significant advances will be presented. So much so that it has been necessary to include three plenary sessions in the program. ”
In fact, the Tabernero himself will explain the results of an investigation assessing the effectiveness of pembrolizumab, a monoclonal antibody that had previously shown its effectiveness in multiple tumors and has now done so again in patients with a binding adenocarcinoma. Advanced gastric or gastroesophageal as the first line of treatment, and assesses its effectiveness as a single agent. The previous results of this study were already presented at the last ESMO Gastrointestinal Congress, but now they present some novelties in the population of microsatellite instability patients, which account for between 8 and 10 percent of gastrointestinal tumors. “Here we find that there is a spectacular benefit of first-line immunotherapy against chemotherapy. Although it is not a very large population, in them the benefit obtained is very remarkable, ”says the president of ESMO.
Likewise, the study has served to demonstrate that the safety profile of the monoclonal antibody is more favorable than that of chemotherapy, with fewer side effects. “With all these evidences, we are confident that immunotherapeutic treatment with pembrolizumab alone in this patient population can be considered in the first line of treatment in patients with gastric tumors.”
Cervical cancer
Another of the tumors that seem to benefit especially from immunotherapy is cervical cancer. Specifically, it is expected that the preliminary results of a combined phase I / II cohort study of an immunotherapy research trial to assess the safety and efficacy of nivolumab and nivolumab in oral gynecological cancers will be announced during the oral presentations session combination in tumors associated with viruses (Checkmate 358).
The results will be presented by Ana Oaknin, principal investigator of the VHIO Gynecological Neoplasms Group and president of the Gynecological Cancer Group, who explained that “in order to explore new ways of treatment and provide hope to all our patients, Checkmate 358 It has been designed to address those cancers associated with viruses, regardless of their state of expression of PD-L1. ”Thus, this study highlights that for patients who received the combination of nivolumab and ipilimumab without prior treatments for metastatic disease, the rate Survival at 12 months was 83 percent versus 38 percent for those who had them.
These results not only reflect the growing promise of immunotherapies given in combination, but also demonstrate an improvement in efficacy for those patients who have very few therapeutic options available. Just as important, the results were particularly encouraging among patients not previously treated with chemotherapy. Our results, therefore, represent a decisive step forward, guaranteeing a broader investigation in a larger population, ”concludes Ana Oaknin.