New combination therapy shows promise for liver cancer.
Posted by giorgiobertin on May 5, 2024
A drug that targets a protein known as phosphatidylserine has increased the response rate of hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) patients undergoing immunotherapy without compromising their safety.
These are the results of one clinical study of phase two conducted by UT Southwestern Medical Center. The results, published in “Nature Communications“, show the potential benefits of scaling up immunotherapy for this and other forms of cancer.
The only existing treatment for tumors of this type that cannot be removed by surgery was a drug called sorafenib. Recently, immunotherapies have emerged as the most effective treatments for HCC patients.
Researchers in previous studies found that phosphatidylserine, a fatty substance called a phospholipid sometimes found on the surface of tumor cells, appeared to interact with immune cells to prevent them from attacking tumors. An antibody drug called bavituximab that neutralizes phosphatidylserine has shown no effect on tumor response, progression or survival when given alone in several cancer types or in combination with sorafenib in HCC. But bavituximab had never been tested in combination with immunotherapy agents.
Now these results ( NCT03519997) suggest that adding phosphatidylserine-targeting agents to immunotherapy regimens may be promising.
Read the full text of the article:
The phosphatidylserine targeting antibody bavituximab plus pembrolizumab in unresectable hepatocellular carcinoma: a phase 2 trial.
Hsiehchen D, Beg MS, Kainthla R, et al.
Nature Communications. 2024;15(1):2178. doi:10.1038/s41467-024-46542-y
Source: UT Southwestern Medical Center
This entry was posted on Maggio 5, 2024 a 6:12 am and is filed under News-research. Tagged: hepatology, pharmacology, Gastroenterology, immunology, oncology. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.
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