BREAKTHROUGH?

New Cancer Treatment Gives Hope to Patients Previously Expected to Die

The novel approach reverses some tumors’ resistance to immunotherapy.

A new cancer treatment has been found to stop the disease from spreading in patients who are resistant to immunotherapy, The Guardian reports. Medical researchers have found that a combination of immunotherapy and the experimental drug guadecitabine can reverse a cancer’s resistance to immunotherapy—a treatment in which the body’s immune system is harnessed to seek and destroy cancer cells. It’s typically used when other treatments including surgery, radiotherapy, and chemotherapy have not been successful. But some tumors can become resistant to immunotherapy, leaving patients without further options. British oncologists found that the pairing of guadecitabine and immunotherapy stopped cancer from spreading in a third of patients enrolled in a trial.