Trial offers fresh hope for patients resistant to standard cancer treatments
A new cancer treatment tested in patients who had exhausted existing options has delivered what researchers are calling unprecedented results, raising fresh hopes for people with advanced head and neck cancers.
The findings, presented at the annual meeting of the American Society of Clinical Oncology (ASCO) in Chicago, come from an international study led by the U.K.’s Institute of Cancer Research (ICR) and The Royal Marsden NHS Foundation Trust. The trial involved 102 patients from 11 countries whose cancers had either spread or returned and no longer responded to standard treatments, including chemotherapy and immunotherapy.
Researchers administered amivantamab, a targeted therapy developed by Johnson & Johnson, to patients with recurrent or metastatic head and neck cancer. The results showed that tumors shrank or disappeared in 43 participants. Most notably, tumors were completely eradicated in 15 patients, a response experts described as remarkable for a group with very limited treatment options.
Professor Kevin Harrington of the Institute of Cancer Research said the outcomes ranked among the strongest responses ever observed in this category of patients. He noted that therapeutic options are often extremely limited once chemotherapy and immunotherapy fail, making the scale of benefit particularly significant.
