The FDA approved immunotherapeutic drug treatment, which according to the findings extended their life expectancy by more than a quarter • Expert: "In some cases the disease has completely disappeared"
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Significant news for gastric cancer patients:
The FDA has approved a new treatment for metastatic gastric cancer patients of three types.
This is the first new treatment for the disease in a decade.
In approved treatment, patients receive, in addition to chemotherapy, also immunotherapy (which activates the patient's immune system so that it attacks the tumor) with the drug Opedivo.
This is the first immunotherapy treatment given to patients with gastric, esophageal and gastric cancer (GE) and adenocarcinoma gastric cancer.
This is significant news because only five percent of patients with this cancer survive more than five years, and most survive 11-8 months from diagnosis.
The study found that the treatment extended the life expectancy of the patients by two months, and even by three months for patients with a particular biological marker.
The study included 1,500 patients, including patients from Israel who were treated at Hadassah Ein Kerem, Rambam and Ichilov.
The results were summarized a year later but research continues, and some patients survive even longer.
The U.S. Food and Drug Administration has issued a special "orphan drug" approval to all patients with metastatic gastric cancer, after the treatment was found to be a "significant improvement" for them.
The study found that about one-third of patients who had PDL-1 receptors in their bodies responded better to treatment and their median life expectancy was 3.3 months longer, compared with the group that received chemotherapy alone.
Opedivo treatment is given in Israel for other types of cancer but is not yet registered for gastric cancer patients.
There are about 600 new patients in Israel each year with metastatic gastric cancer of this type.
Prof. Ayala Hubert, who was a research partner: "For many years all we had to offer in the first line of treatment to these patients was chemotherapy, except for 15-10 percent of the patients who received herceptin. Immunotherapy treatment went into many tumors with good results, but patients did not reach treatment lines. Advanced.
"I hope that in the future it will be possible after a few months of combined treatment to take these patients off chemotherapy. There is no doubt that this treatment is the most important thing that has happened to these patients in the last decade."
The study improved by several months, but Prof. Hubert has three or four patients with gastric cancer who have received immunotherapy, whose metastatic disease has disappeared: "I have a patient who received immunotherapy for two years. It is now five years since the start of treatment and the tumor is gone. I have never seen treatment before. "Through the vein that raises a metastatic gastric tumor. I am sure that in the coming years we will be able to characterize the group of patients in which Opedivo will bring about a dramatic change."