Researchers at the University of Navarra analyze a new subject of antibodies against cancer.
The work has been published in "Nature Cancer Reviews", one of the most important scientific journals on cancer.
Two researchers from the University Clinic and the research center Applied Medicine (CIMA) of the University of Navarra have published article in Nature Cancer Reviews, one of the most important scientific journals on cancer. The work, signed by Ignacio Melero and Sandra Hervas-Stubbs together with other scientists from the USA and UK, addresses a new pharmacological family with applications in cancer and chronic diseases of viral origin.
Specifically, this is therapy with immunostimulatory monoclonal antibodies, which target immune system cells to elicit a more intense response to the tumor. According to Dr. Melero, it has the advantage that "it exploits a different mechanism of action to the other strategies currently used to treat cancer, and is capable of establishing interactions with them that mutually enhance them".
At the moment, he says that they are being tested in people with melanoma, renal cancer and ovarian cancer because there are more techniques that allow the immune response to be measured in them, but there are plans to extend them to other indications.
The first agent of this subject, the anti-CTLA-4, began to be tested on patients in 1999. "In therapy against melanoma, between 15 and 20% of objective clinical responses (reduction or disappearance of the tumor) have been obtained, which attract the attention of researchers because they are prolonged over time," says the expert from the University of Navarra.
Currently, the researchers are studying its benefit in terms of patient survival through two phase III clinical trials: "In two years we will check its value as a single agent, and we will need more time to find out whether its effects in therapeutic combinations are as positive as the results in animal models predict".
Apart from this one, there are four other members of this family of immunotherapeutic monoclonal antibodies at development. Their administration in patients started a year and a half ago, and conclusions on their efficacy have not yet been published.