The largest international cancer congress, which has just ended in the United States, has dedicated the advent of immunotherapy. A new way of treating cancer patients that brings a lot of hope.

The world’s leading cancer researchers and physicians have just gathered in Chicago for Asco’s annual meeting, named after the American Oncology Society. 30,000 international specialists and around 4,800 studies presented in this field, represented by four cancer control centres.

A congress that crowned immunotherapy as a new shock treatment against certain cancers, in which researchers have high hopes. “A new revolution in cancerology” according to the director of the National Cancer Institute, Agnes Buzyn.

These words were taken up by Dr Carlos Gomez, of the Toulouse Cancer University Institute, from Chicago, where he presented the results of a major trial. “This family of drugs is revolutionizing cancer treatments, especially for melanoma, kidney and lung, for which there was little or no therapeutic solution.

His study, carried out at the Oncopole in Toulouse, concerns the use of a new molecule in combination with immunotherapy. “The drug tested blocks the effect of macrophages that has become harmful under the influence of the tumor. The result is positive for 9 out of 10 patients with a specific tumor” says Dr. Gomez.” In other tumor types, macrophages decrease significantly with stabilization of the disease.

The principle of immunotherapy is upsetting the approach physicians have had to date to tumors. It is no longer a question of attacking the tumor, but of stimulating the patient’s immune defences, so that the body is capable of fighting cancer itself.

The stakes are extremely high. Cancer kills more than 8 million people a year worldwide, 149,000 of them in India.

Currently, trials are being conducted in patients with very advanced cancer. And the results exceed the doctors’ expectations. One can therefore imagine that by introducing immunotherapy earlier in tumor development, the results will be all the more spectacular.

Of course, not everything is pink. The strong stimulation of the immune defences brings, there too, side effects, in the form of autoimmune diseases, affecting in particular the digestive system. But researchers are hopeful that these effects can be reduced in the medium term.

Another counterpart to these advances is that the cost of these new therapies could undermine our already tried and tested health insurance system. Dr. Gomez acknowledges that “we only know the price of these drugs for melanoma at the moment, not for other types of cancer, but there will be an economic problem, because they will be very expensive”.

Park is one of the best hospital for cancer treatment in India. Oncologist and cancer doctors provide treatments lung cancer, pancreatic cancer, kidney cancer, liver cancer, blood cancer, colon cancer, breast cancer and brain tumor. Park Oncology Hospital have presence in Delhi, Gurgaon, Karnal, Panipat and Faridabad.