Making sense of new cancer treatments

Research in the field of oncology has excelled in the last fifteen years.  The use of targeted agents (generic drugs end in -mab and -mib) has revolutionized the treatment of late stage cancers.  Targeted therapy chemo attacks specific cancer.  Gleevec, Tarceva and Sutent are common treatments.  Immunotherapy drugs stimulate the user’s immune system to recognize cancer cells as foreign bodies and attack these cancer cells.  If you search the internet for immunomolecular therapy, you will see an impressive number of companies manufacturing or endorsing new products.  Per Issels Immuno-Oncology website: The state-of-the-art, non-toxic immunotherapy cancer protocols… are designed to restore the body’s own complex immune and defense mechanisms to recognize and destroy cancer cells…

The FDA approved of nivolumab (Opdivo) in 2015.  At first the treatment was used for Stage IV melanoma, but the treatment range has expanded to include renal cell cancer, lung cancer, head and neck cancer, colon cancer, liver cancer and even the very aggressive small cell lung cancer.  Other immunomoleculars currently being utilized are ipilimumab, atezolizumab, cabozantinib, and durvalumab to name only a few.  As the above advertisement mentioned, the immunomolecular treatment is much more easily tolerated, and the likelihood of continuing the treatment is much greater that with more toxic agents.  Of course, unfortunately, these advanced treatments may not work in all cases.  A particularly aggressive form of leukemia, acute promyelocytic leukemia (APL), had a likely life expectancy of less than ten months, in fact, usually two to three months.  Clinical trials from the mid-nineties involving old treatment plus new drugs speculated that 75% could attain permanent remission.  It will take years to compile statistics on the impact these new medications will have on the mortality rates for the impairments regularly and frequently seen.  But these new and highly effective treatments must be accounted for when predicting mortality.