Issued by: Change:
More effective therapies, nanotechnology and even the prospect of vaccination for specific tumors: battles may slowly begin to turn in the relentless war against cancer.
The second leading cause of death worldwide, cancer accounted for approximately 9.6 million deaths, or one in six deaths, in 2018.
Ahead of World Cancer Day on Thursday, here’s a look at some of the most promising developments in the treatment and prevention of the disease.
Breakdown immunotherapy
Immunotherapy drugs, which are a key way for the immune system to recognize and destroy cancer cells, have shown great promise against previously untreatable cancers over the past decade.
But they vary widely among different types of cancer and only work in about a quarter of all patients.
A major research focus is now focused on “increasing the percentage of patients who respond well to immunotherapy,” according to Christophe Le Tourneau, director of clinical studies at the Curie Institute of France.
One promising pathway is the development of antibodies capable of specific proteins found in cancer cells, “which would help the body to destroy those cells,” said Axel Kahn, president of the League Against Cancer, ri AFP.
He said research had shown that administration of medications or toxins helped destroy cancer cells after antibodies were discovered.
Research is also ongoing on post – chemotherapy immunotherapy, with the initial treatment creating mutations in cancer cells that may make it easier for the immune system to see and hunt.
Another technique called checkpoint inhibitor therapy has also shown promise.
When proteins contained within cancer cells bind to immune cells, they send an “off” signal to the rest of the immune system, releasing the body’s natural defenses.
Checkpoint inhibitor therapy largely blocks this link, allowing immune T-cells to seek out and destroy the pathogen.
This device has already significantly improved some melanomas and lung cancers, and other tests are underway.
Such a treatment could give hope to the 10-15 percent of breast cancer sufferers who receive so-called “triple-negative” prognoses – tumors that lack hormonal protein receptors or HER2.
HER2-positive breast cancer tends to develop faster than other forms but is just as treatable.
However, triple-negative breast cancer is “usually more aggressive (but) the treatment options available today are not effective enough”, according to the Arc Foundation’s cancer research center near Paris.
One study with the drug durvalumab published this month in Natural Medicine showed that the antibody was somewhat effective in blocking the ability of tumors to suppress the immune system.
‘Vaccine’ for tumors?
Experiments are also underway examining the effectiveness of specific candidate vaccines that help treat tumors.
The French biotech company Transgene is developing a treatment that combines immunotherapy and a viral vector vaccine – a modified virus that provides anti-cancer guidance to the body.
A similar test is underway to treat patients with ear, nose or throat cancer.
The Oncopole Toulouse cancer treatment center, which is conducting the research, said the treatment acts as a kind of “face recognition service” for the immune system to detect cancer cells and learn how to destroy them – similar to how some vaccines work.
Predicts effective treatment
By analyzing the structure and, increasingly, the genetic shape of cancer plays a key role not only in prognosis – the likelihood of a patient overcoming it – but also in the choices treatment available.
“This is really the key issue: specific treatments are not worth giving to people who do not benefit from them and it is absolutely vital that those who do benefit from them, said Eric Solary, scientific director at Arc Foundation.
A better understanding of specific mutations in cancer cells as well as how immune cells behave is helping doctors make ever more accurate treatment choices.
Nanotechnology
Another area of growing interest is the use of nanocapsules – a microscopic coating of metal or fat on drug molecules.
The idea according to Solary is to circulate medicine around the patient’s body better by allowing it to “enter directly into tumor cells and avoid damaging normal cells”.
Similarly, researchers are also looking at using genetically modified salmonella bacteria to destroy tumors from the outside – where more traditional treatments, particularly chemotherapy, cannot go unnoticed. in.
(AFP)