Researchers at Dana-Farber Cancer Institute have successfully developed a new therapy that improves the remission rate of patients with Hodgkin lymphoma by 87 percent. Their findings provide new evidence that treatments aimed at boosting the body's immune system can be used to kill cancer cells.
Hodgkin Lymphoma, or Hodgkin disease, is a cancer that attacks the white blood cells called lymphocytes. The disease can start almost anywhere in the body, but often does so in the chest, neck or under the arms. It is considered rare, with only 10,000 new cases per year in the United States, but almost 25 percent of sufferers experience relapse after initial treatment.
The new study involved 23 patients diagnosed with the disease and have experienced a relapse or resistance to other therapies. Eighty percent of the participants had undergone stem cell transplant procedures prior to the study, while more than a third had six other types of treatments.
For the new study, the participants were given nivolumab, an antibody that blocks the protein called PD-1, to boost the immune system so it could fight the cancer cells trying to attack it. Twenty of them, or 87 percent of the sample, responded positively to the new therapy; four became tumor-free and 16 experienced shrinkage in their tumors. After the six-month treatment period, 86 percent did not experience relapse.
Researchers pointed out that there are some side effects – inflammation of the pancreas, lung, or colon, but nothing life-threatening, the New York Times reported.
"What makes these results especially encouraging is that they were achieved in patients who had exhausted other treatment options," study co-senior author Dr. Margaret Shipp, chief of the Division of Hematologic Neoplasia at Dana-Farber, said in a press release. "We're also excited by the duration of responses to the drug: the majority of patients who had a response are still doing well more than a year after their treatment."
Nivolumab is being developed by Bristol-Myers under the brand name Opdivo. But there are other big pharmaceutical companies – including Merck, AstraZeneca Plc and Roche Holding AG – that are developing similar products, according to Businessweek.
This study was published in the Dec. 6 issue of the New England Journal of Medicine and was presented at the annual meeting of the American Society of Hematology (ASH) in San Francisco.
