Adding Immunotherapy to Chemotherapy After Surgery Improves Survival in Colon Cancer

The AHA! Team — Mon, 04 Aug 2025 05:43:16 +0000

Mayo Clinic via News-Medical – Colon cancer is the third most prevalent form of cancer in the U.S., and while screening has helped detect and prevent colon cancer from spreading, major advancements in treating colon cancer have lagged. Now, new research led by Mayo Clinic Comprehensive Cancer Center found that adding immunotherapy to chemotherapy after surgery for patients with stage 3 (node-positive) colon cancer – and with a specific genetic makeup called deficient DNA mismatch repair (dMMR) – was associated with a 50% reduction in cancer recurrence and death compared to chemotherapy alone. Approximately 15% of people diagnosed with colon cancer exhibit dMMR and, to date, these tumors appear less sensitive to chemotherapy. The results of the multi-center study were presented during a plenary session at the 2025 American Society of Clinical Oncology (ASCO) Annual Meeting in Chicago. “The findings from our study represent a major advance in the adjuvant treatment of dMMR stage 3 colon cancer and will now change the treatment for this type of cancer,” says oncologist Frank Sinicrope, M.D., who led the study. “It’s extremely rewarding to be able to offer our patients a new treatment regimen that can reduce the risk of recurrence and improve their chances of survival.” Until now, the standard treatment after surgery for any stage 3 colon cancer has been chemotherapy. However, the researchers note that approximately 30% of patients experience cancer recurrence despite this treatment. The clinical trial enrolled 712 patients with dMMR stage 3 colon cancer that had been surgically removed and who had cancer cells in their lymph nodes. The immunotherapy given in this study was an immune checkpoint inhibitor, known as atezolizumab, which activates one’s immune system to attack and kill cancer cells, which are responsible for cancer recurrence and spread. The patients – who lived in the U.S. and Germany – received chemotherapy for six months along with immunotherapy and then continued with immunotherapy alone for another six months. Dr. Sinicrope and others previously studied patients with colon cancer whose cells are unable to repair errors during DNA replication that create a nucleotide mismatch, a condition called dMMR. They noted that these patients’ tumors showed a striking increase in inflammatory cells within the tumor, including those that express the target of immune checkpoint inhibitors. This sparked the idea of using immune checkpoint inhibitors to make the immune cells more effective in attacking and killing the cancer cells. Based on the data from this study, Dr. Sinicrope recommends this combination of immunotherapy and chemotherapy treatment to be the new standard treatment for stage 3 deficient mismatch repair colon cancer. The research team plans to approach the National Comprehensive Cancer Network, a nonprofit organization consisting of 33 leading cancer centers, including Mayo Clinic, with this recommendation. The study included patients with Lynch syndrome, the most common form of hereditary colon cancer, as these patients can have tumors that show deficient mismatch repair (dMMR). We’re changing the paradigm in colon cancer treatment. By using immunotherapy at earlier stages of disease, we are achieving meaningful benefits for our patients.” -Frank Sinicrope, M.D., Mayo Clinic Comprehensive Cancer Center Source: Mayo Clinic To read the original article click here.

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Researchers Engineer Cells to Destroy Malignant Tumor Cells but Leave the Rest Alone

AHA Publisher — Fri, 09 Jul 2021 07:00:04 +0000

McMaster University via EurekAlert – Researchers at McMaster University have developed a promising new cancer immunotherapy that uses cancer-killing cells genetically engineered outside the body to find and destroy malignant tumors. The modified “natural killer” cells can differentiate between cancer cells and healthy cells that are often intermingled in and around tumors, destroying only the targeted cells. The natural killer cells’ ability to distinguish the target cells, even from healthy cells that bear similar markers, brings new promise to this branch of immunotherapy, say members of the research team behind a paper published in the current issue of the journal iScience, newly posted on the PubMed database. The experimental treatment is an alternative to chimeric antigen receptor T-cell therapy, or CAR-T, which received FDA approval in 2017. The engineered T-cells used in CAR-T therapy are highly effective against some blood-borne cancers but cannot distinguish between cancerous and non-cancerous cells, so while they offer important benefits, they are not uniformly applicable to all forms of cancer. In patients with solid tumors, the T-cells can cause devastating, even lethal side effects. The team behind the research wanted a treatment with the same power as CAR-T, but which could be used safely against solid-tumor cancers. They first propagated natural killer cells taken from the blood of patients with breast cancer. Such cells perform a similar function to T-cells in the immune system. The researchers then genetically modified them to target specific receptors on cancer cells, successfully testing the CAR-NK cells in the laboratory on tumor cells derived from breast cancer patients “We want to be able to attack these malignancies that have been so resistant to other treatments,” says lead author Ana Portillo, a PhD candidate in the Department of Medicine. “The efficacy we see with CAR-NK cells in the laboratory is very promising and seeing that this technology is feasible is very important. Now, we have much better and safer options for solid tumors.” “These CAR-NK cells are a little bit smarter, in a way, in that they only kill the enemy cells and not good cells that happen to have the same marker,” says Ashkar, Portillo’s supervisor and a Professor of Medicine at McMaster. “These cells have a sober second thought that says, ‘I recognize this target, but is this target part of a healthy cell or a cancer cell?’ They are able to leave the healthy cells alone and kill the cancer cells.” Portillo and Ashkar’s 12 co-authors, most associated with McMaster’s Department of Medicine and its Immunology Research Centre, include McMaster’s Bindi Dhesy-Thind (Associate Professor, Oncology), who provided blood samples from patients being treated for breast cancer in her clinical practice at Hamilton Health Sciences’ Juravinski Cancer Centre. “These are very exciting results, as to date the benefits of immunotherapy in breast cancer have lagged behind that of other malignancies,” she said. “These engineered CAR-NK cells are an important step towards having a viable immunotherapy option in this large group of patients.” Ashkar says there is good reason to believe the technology would have a similar effect on solid tumors associated with lung, ovarian and other cancers. The next step in moving the therapy toward clinical use is to conduct human trials, which the researchers are now arranging. To read the original article click here.

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Adding Immunotherapy to Chemotherapy After Surgery Improves Survival in Colon Cancer

Researchers Engineer Cells to Destroy Malignant Tumor Cells but Leave the Rest Alone