Clin Cancer Res: combined immunotherapy for advanced neuroendocrine cancer

February 26, 2020 / bioun / -- according to the results of a recent clinical trial targeting CTLA-4 and PD-1 to treat rare tumors (DART), many patients with severe symptoms of neuroendocrine tumors respond well to this treatment Through a novel "basket" design, the researchers used the combination of iplimumab (CTLA-4 monoclonal antibody) and nivolumab (PD-1 monoclonal antibody) to treat patients with 53 rare cancers The design allows testing of a single drug or combination of drugs in a variety of tumor types, rapidly expanding the opportunity for immunotherapy drug development for rare cancers, (image source: SWOG Cancer Network) dart is managed by the SWOG cancer research network, a clinical trial group that is part of the NCI national clinical trial network (nctn), the oldest and largest publicly funded cancer research network in the United States The results were published in the Journal of clinical cancer research Because there are few treatment options for patients with malignant or rapidly growing neuroendocrine cancer, the results of this study are very exciting "We are very encouraged by these results," said Dr sandip pravin Patel, chairman of dart clinical research and associate professor of medicine at the University of California, San Diego School of medicine and medical oncologist at the Moores Cancer Center , based on the effective response of patients, we conducted another study to recruit only patients with malignant neuroendocrine cancer to see if we can verify the results we obtained before We hope to get results later this year " In this study, 32 eligible patients were treated with ipilimumab and nivolumab Among them, 18 patients were highly malignant and had metastasis After treatment, 8 of the 18 patients (44%) had partial or complete atrophy of tumor tissue In contrast, patients with early cancer did not respond significantly (bio Com) information source: immunology combo effective for patients with high grade neuroendocrine cancer original source: sandip P Patel et al, a phase II basket trial of dual anti-CTLA-4 and anti-PD-1 blockade in rare tumors (DART SWOG 1609) in patients with non pancreative neuroendocrine tumors, Clinical Cancer Research (2020) DOI: 10.1158/1078-0432.CCR-19-3356