Successful treatment of colon cancer with immunotherapy: “Innovative” | RTL News

In two-thirds of the 111 patients Who treated the hospital this wayThe tumor had completely disappeared at the time of the operation. None of the patients developed cancer again during a median of more than two years of follow-up. Thanks to immunotherapy, the body removes cancer cells itself.

Microsatellite-stable metastasis (MSI) colon cancer

The hospital discovered four years ago that immunotherapy could be successful in treating so-called unstable colon cancer (MSI) after conducting research on twenty patients. Therefore, it was decided to expand the study to a larger group.

Patients received two courses of immunotherapy in the month before surgery. In 95%, only 10% of cancer cells were still present at the time of surgery. Also, 68% of them had no living cancer cells left at all.

Errors in DNA

“This specific type of colon cancer has many errors in the DNA, which makes cancer cells more easily detected by the immune system,” says Myriam Chalabi, the oncologist who led the study on the treatment’s success. “The immune system only needs a small boost to successfully attack those cancer cells.”

Chalabi mentions the results that has been published In the New England Journal of Medicine, “Pioneer.”