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Combining Keytruda with ex-vivo TIL can cause lung cancer remission?
This article from Stat+ highlights a promising development:
Drugs called immune checkpoint inhibitors have transformed treatment of many types of tumors, but metastatic lung cancer has proven more challenging: While these medications have significantly extended survival for some patients, most still do not respond or develop resistance quickly. Now a small proof-of-concept study published in Nature Medicine shows that a new form of immunotherapy using a patient’s own immune cells may bring about durable responses for some people with advanced non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC).
Patients in the small Phase 1 pilot trial were treated with tumor-infiltrating lymphocytes (TILs), which have previously brought about durable remissions in studies of patients with some other cancers but had not previously been tested in metastatic lung cancer. TILs are naturally found in solid tumors and have the ability to kill cancer cells, but the body doesn’t produce enough of them. So the researchers extracted the cells from tumors and grew billions of copies in lab dishes before transferring them back into the patients.
When combined with chemotherapy and a monoclonal antibody drug, the therapy led to complete remission in two patients with stage 4 lung cancer that were ongoing after 1.5 years. The authors also reported a reduction of tumor burden in 11 out of the 16 patients, with an overall reduction in size of 35%.
“Many patients with this cancer count their lives in weeks to months,” said Roberto Ruiz-Cordero, a pathologist at the University of California, San Francisco, who was not involved with the study. “So the fact that at least two patients achieved complete responses and were alive one and a half years later is outstanding.”
I opened a 1% position in $IOVA, which focuses on TIL therapies. Here's their pipeline:
Nature
Tumor-infiltrating lymphocyte treatment for anti-PD-1-resistant metastatic lung cancer: a phase 1 trial - Nature Medicine
Adoptive cell therapy with tumor-infiltrating lymphocytes in metastatic lung cancer patients is safe and elicits antitumor activity, including ongoing complete responses, in association with polyclonal T cell responses against tumor antigens.
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