New medicines that shrink tumors and have beneficial effects lasting for months to years in some cancer patients are helping breathe new life into an old idea: using a patient’s own immune cells to attack malignant cells.
Several drug makers are trying to prove the safety and efficacy of new medicines that harness the body’s own lines of defense. Merck, for one, is testing an immune-modulating compound in patients with metastatic, or spreading, melanoma. In an early-stage trial, half of the patients receiving the highest-attempted dose of the drug saw their tumors shrink or disappear, and more than a year later, the vast majority of those patients who responded to that dose and lower doses were still alive. On average, the prognosis for survival a patient with late-stage metastatic melanoma is less than a year.
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