Immunotherapy Beating Cancer, Offers New Hope for Patients

Evidence is mounting that the type of cancer treatment known as immunotherapy is offering patients a better chance at beating the dreaded disease.

The Food and Drug Administration in March approved two new immunotherapy drugs.

Keytruda was approved for Hodgkin’s lymphoma to treat patients for whom all other treatments have failed. In addition, Bavencio was okayed to treat metastatic Merkel cell carcinoma, a rare form of skin cancer. 

Like other immunotherapy agents, these drugs received accelerated approval, an indication of the FDA’s growing faith in the power of these drugs to help cancer patients.

Since 2014 the FDA has green-lighted several of these medications – or broadened the use of when some such drugs can be given – evidence that federal regulators feel that these agents should enter the pipeline quickly. 

In addition to those cited above, immunotherapy drugs have been approved for treating melanoma, lung cancer, bladder, head, and neck cancers.

“It’s incredible. It’s changed the paradigm in the way we treat lung cancer,” Dr. Roy Herbst tells Newsmax Health.

Immunotherapy acts differently than conventional chemotherapy.  Conventional drugs target fast-growing cells in the body.  Cancer cells divide rapidly, but so do normal cells in your blood, mouth, intestinal tract, nose, nails, and hair.

The loss of these normal cells is the reason why chemotherapy causes side effects such  as hair loss, nausea, intestinal problems, and fatigue.

In contrast, immunologic agents harness the power of the body’s own immune defenses – long a goal of alternative medicine practitioners – to recognize and fight only the cancerous cells. Although immunologic drugs can cause side effects, they tend to be less severe, says Herbst, chief of oncology at the Yale Cancer Center and Smilow Cancer Hospital, and associate director for translational research at Yale Cancer Center.

“I have patients who have been living three to four years with metastatic lung cancer,” he says. “Someone [are] living so long with advanced lung cancer it is extraordinary.”

Bob Amendola of Northford, Conn. is one such patient.  Now 49, he was diagnosed with lung cancer 11 years ago, after finding a small lump in his neck.

“I was 38 years old and everything was going great. I felt a little bump by my collarbone and my sister, who is a nurse, said, ‘That’s unusual, you should get it looked at.’ “

“The doctor gave me antibiotics, which didn’t do anything, so I went for a CAT scan.  I had the scan at 4 p.m. and that night, my doctor called me and said, ‘The scan doesn’t look too good, I’m going to send you to a thoracic surgeon.’ “

The diagnosis was Stage 4 lung cancer, which had already spread to Amendola’s brain.  Such advanced cancer patients have a 1 percent chance of survival, the American Cancer Society says.

Amendola asked to be treated as aggressively as possible. His cancer was inoperable, but radiation took care of the spots on his brain and chemotherapy managed to keep the disease from progressing for seven grueling years.

“Chemotherapy is vicious. It’s draining. You’re exhausted, you’re throwing you, you have mood swings – you’re not the same person,” he says. “You can’t swallow anything. You come out it gradually and, once you do, it’s time to go through it all over again.”

But after seven years, the cancer started to grow again.

Amendola enrolled in a clinical trial of Tecentriq (atezolizumab).  He fit the criteria – the immunotherapy drug as being evaluated in patients like him, those who had already been treated with chemotherapy or whose tumors have certain markers.

When he entered the trial, there was a 1.5-inch tumor bulging out of his skin, Amendola says.

He started the treatment and almost instantly, the tumor began to disappear.

“I was in the shower, drying myself off and I thought to myself, this bump is going down,” he recalls. A CAT scan confirmed that the tumor had shrunk by 30 percent.

After a year, it was completely gone.

“My lung tumor was all cleared up and I felt great. It was a miracle,” he says.

He also felt no side effects, and even worked on conference calls or his laptop while he was receiving the treatment.

“I felt no discomfort at all. I didn’t lose my hair; there was no chalkiness in my mouth. I just went on with my life,” he says.

In the last three years since the trial ended, Amendola’s had a few small growths but they’ve been surgically removed and none have returned, he says.

But immunotherapy is not for everyone, Herbst notes.

“The drugs we have now help about 20 percent of patients so what we are doing now is researching ways to benefit a larger number of patients,” he says.

This includes looking for other tumor markers that could indicate the drugs would work, or combining them with chemotherapy.

Amendola shares his story so cancer patients like him won’t give up, he says.

“You have to keep the faith and have hope that someday, in some way, there will be something there for you,” he says. “If not today, it might be tomorrow. For instance, this drug works for some people, and for some people it doesn’t. But I tell everybody I talk to that there is hope out there.”