Health
Experimental Cancer Shot Eliminates Tumors in Landmark Study
By James Morley III, 1
A new cancer treatment has completely eliminated tumors in some patients with advanced head and neck cancer whose disease had stopped responding to standard treatments, the Guardian reported on Saturday.
Results from the international OrigAMI-4 trial showed that the experimental drug amivantamab shrank or eliminated tumors in 43 of 102 patients whose cancer had spread or returned after chemotherapy and immunotherapy failed.
Kevin Harrington of the Institute of Cancer Research and the Royal Marsden NHS Foundation Trust called the results "unprecedentedly strong responses" in patients with few remaining treatment options.
"This is a group of patients for whom treatment options are extremely limited, so seeing this level of benefit is very striking," Harrington said.
The findings will be presented at the American Society of Clinical Oncology (ASCO) annual meeting in Chicago.
Amivantamab attacks cancer in three ways.
It blocks the EGFR protein that helps tumors grow, blocks the MET pathway that cancer cells often use to escape treatment, and helps activate the immune system to attack tumors.
Researchers said the drug is given as a small injection under the skin rather than through an IV, making treatment faster and easier to administer.
Most side effects were mild to moderate, and fewer than one in 10 patients stopped treatment because of them.
One patient, Carl Walsh, 56, of Birmingham, joined the trial after chemotherapy and immunotherapy failed to control his tongue cancer.
"I was initially treated with both chemotherapy and immunotherapy, which unfortunately were not successful," Walsh said.
"At that point, I was recommended for the OrigAMI-4 trial," he said.
