For the patients involved – and potentially for other patients with specific types of rectal cancer who come after them – the outcome was dramatic. It allowed them to avoid further surgery, chemotherapy and radiation, proceeding under observation alone.
The drug is known as a checkpoint inhibitor. It works by removing the shield that cancer cells put around them that blocks T-cells in the body’s immune system from attacking them. The findings fall within one of the most promising areas of frontier experimental cancer research that combines personalised medicine with immunotherapy. The ambition is to train the immune system to destroy cancer cells by helping it detect specific mutations in the genetic makeup of an individual patient’s own tumour.
As a result, the cancer cells produce proteins with higher levels of genetic errors in them which makes them more visible to the body’s immune system once the shield has been removed.