The new study “is a big deal and has been the buzz of the breast cancer research world,” said Dr. Larry Norton of Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center in an email. He was not involved in the study, although he said he had done paid consulting work for the past two years for the maker of Abraxane.

Beyond changing treatment practices, he said the research “opens the door to new approaches to harness the immune system to fight breast cancer, and there is every reason to expect major advances there.”

He cautioned that the combined treatment would have to be studied further, to assess side effects.

Dr. Kevin Kalinsky, a breast cancer specialist at NewYork-Presbyterian/Columbia University Irving Medical Center, suggested that patients like those in the study should talk to their doctors “about whether it is possible for them to get access to the medication while we’re waiting for F.D.A. approval.”

He did not take part in this study. He said he has received consulting fees from about 10 drug companies, including Genentech.

The women in the study had triple-negative breast cancer that had been newly diagnosed and had become metastatic, meaning it had begun to spread. Once that occurs, the outlook is grim, with many patients surviving 18 months or less.

Half received chemo alone, and half were given chemo plus immunotherapy.

Among those who received the combination, the median survival was 21.3 months, compared with 17.6 months for those who received chemo alone. The difference was not statistically significant.</s>Women with an aggressive type of breast cancer lived longer if they received immunotherapy plus chemotherapy, rather than chemo alone, a major study has found.

Women with an aggressive type of breast cancer lived longer if they received immunotherapy plus chemotherapy, rather than chemo alone, a major study has found.

The results are expected to change the standard of care for women like those in the clinical trial, who had advanced cases of “triple-negative” breast cancer. That form of the disease often resists standard therapies, and survival rates are poor. It is twice as common in African-American women as in white women, and more likely to occur in younger women.

Researchers said the new study was a long-awaited breakthrough for immunotherapy in breast cancer. Until now, most progress had been in other cancers, including lung cancer and melanoma, an aggressive skin cancer.

These findings may lead to the first approval by the Food and Drug Administration for an immunotherapy drug to treat breast cancer. But the approval would likely be limited to a certain type of aggressive cancer.

Although triple-negative tumors occur in only about 15 percent of patients with invasive breast cancer in the United States (or nearly 40,000 each year), they account for a disproportionate share of deaths, as many as 30 percent to 40 percent.

The term triple-negative refers to the tumors’ lack of sensitivity to the hormones estrogen and progesterone, and their lack of a protein called HER2, which is a target of treatment.

The immunotherapy in the study was atezolizumab (brand name Tecentriq), which belongs to a class of drugs called checkpoint inhibitors; the chemotherapy was nab-paclitaxel (Abraxane). Genentech is the maker of the immunotherapy drug in the study and paid for the research.

The findings were published Saturday in The New England Journal of Medicine, and were to be presented at a meeting of the European Society for Medical Oncology, in Munich. The study included 902 patients treated at 246 medical centers in 41 countries. Genentech, which is part of Roche, has already submitted the data to the FDA for approval.

Checkpoint inhibitors like atezolizumab work by helping T-cells — a type of white blood cell that is part of the immune system — recognize cancer and attack it. Research that led to these drugs won this year’s Nobel Prize in medicine.

The drugs generally work for fewer than half of patients but can bring lasting recoveries even to people who were severely ill. Side effects can be dangerous, even life-threatening, and treatment costs more than $100,000 a year.

In other cancers, researchers sometimes describe the tumors as “hot,” meaning they tend to have many mutations — genetic abnormalities that the immune system can recognize as foreign and attack.

But breast cancers tend to be relatively “cold,” with fewer mutations. The immune system is less likely to recognize them as invaders, which may help explain why previous studies of checkpoint inhibitors in breast cancer have been somewhat disappointing, researchers say.

In the new study, the key to success seems to have been giving chemotherapy along with immunotherapy.

“Chemo takes away the invisibility cloak the cancer has managed to put on,” Mayer said.

The chemo may help to ignite the immune system, in part by killing cancer cells that then spill substances the T-cells detect as foreign and begin to hunt.

The women in the study had triple-negative breast cancer that had been newly diagnosed and had become metastatic, meaning it had begun to spread. Once that occurs, the outlook is grim, with many patients surviving 18 months or less.

Half received chemo alone, and half were given chemo plus immunotherapy.

Among those who received the combination, the median survival was 21.3 months, compared with 17.6 months for those who received chemo alone. The difference was not statistically significant.

But when the researchers looked at women who had a marker called PD-L1 on their cancer cells, the results were striking: The median survival was 25 months in the combination group, versus 15.5 months with just chemo. That finding has not been analyzed statistically, and the patients are still being followed.

Doctors say the survival difference is important.

“This is truly a game changer,” said Dr. Sylvia Adams, an author of the study from NYU Langone Health’s Perlmutter Cancer Center.

Cancer patients with the PD-L1 marker tend to respond better to checkpoint inhibitors than those without it. In this study, 41 percent of patients had the marker. Genentech is seeking approval for treatment in triple-negative patients with the marker.

Adams said some patients, after initial treatment with both types of drug, have been doing well for two or three years with immunotherapy alone.

The “million-dollar question,” she said, is whether they can safely stop the immunotherapy if they have no sign of cancer.

She noted that patients in the study had some of the expected side effects of immunotherapy, including lung and pancreas inflammation.

Maribel Ramos, 42, was being treated at another hospital, which recommended chemo for her advanced triple-negative breast cancer.

“I was very worried because I know with that type of cancer, chemo doesn’t work,” Ramos said. She has three daughters: a 23-year-old and 10-year-old twins.

Her sister, a nurse at New York University, told her about the study there, and she began treatment in February 2016. She didn’t know it at the time, but she had been picked at random to receive the combined treatment. Within a few months, her tumors began to shrink. Nine months ago, for the first time, a scan found no sign of cancer. She is staying on immunotherapy.

“I just feel so happy that you can live longer,” Ramos said.

About 266,120 new cases of invasive breast cancer are expected in women in 2018 in the United States, and 40,920 deaths.</s>It’s good news for women with triple-negative breast cancer, an aggressive and hard-to-treat form of breast cancer that targets women under 50.

A new study published Saturday in the New England Journal of Medicine found a combination of chemotherapy and antibody medications taught the women’s own immune system to attack cancer cells, in some cases extending life by almost a year.

“This is the first time immunotherapy has worked in such a difficult to treat cancer, and is a huge step forward for these breast cancer patients,” said lead author Dr. Peter Schmid of Queen Mary University of London, in a statement. He presented his findings at the European Society for Medical Oncology conference in Munich, Germany on Saturday.

“This is a real advance that is going to allow us to help more people,” said Memorial Sloan Kettering oncologist Dr. Larry Norton, who was not involved in the study. “Once we get regulatory approval, I think the expectation is this will change the standard of care.”

About one in ten of all breast cancers are triple-negative, according to the National Breast Cancer Foundation. It is most likely to affect Hispanic and African American women and those with a BRCA1 gene mutation. It also tends to attack women in their 40s and 50s.

“It is particularly tragic that those affected are often young,” Schmid said, and likely to still be raising families. “We have desperately been looking for better treatment options.”

When breast cancer cells test negative for estrogen, progesterone, or human epidermal growth factor 2 (HER2), it’s called a triple-negative breast cancer. Therefore, it does not respond to any of the available hormonal cancer treatments.

It does respond to chemotherapy. However, for most women the cancer cells quickly develop resistance to the chemo. That allows the aggressive cancer to spread to other parts of the body, thus reducing survival rates.

In this trial, the combination of medication and chemo extended progression-free survival by at least 10 months, the study found. The chance of the cancer spreading to other areas of the body and the risk of death was also reduced by up to 40%.

“This is just the beginning of using immunotherapy for breast cancer,” said Norton who serves as the director of the Evelyn H. Lauder Breast Center at the Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center.

Scientists are learning “so much and so rapidly about other ways to stimulate the immune system,” Norton said, that he predicts an “explosion of well-designed studies that will push the agenda forward.”

How does it work?

The new treatment combines the immunotherapy drug atezolizumab and traditional chemotherapy.

In a normal state, the immune system will not attack cancer cells because they are viewed as a part of the body. That’s where atezolizumab comes in. It’s an antibody that attaches to the cancer cell. It’s job is to inactivate a protein called PD-L1, which is responsible for telling the immune system “don’t attack me.”

Chemotherapy is also needed, to “rough up” the exterior of the cancer cell, Schmid explained. That allows the newly revved-up immune system to recognize and attack the invader.

“We are using chemotherapy to tear away the tumor’s ‘immune-protective cloak,’ to expose it,” Schmid said, “enabling people’s own immune system to get at it.”

The Phase three study followed more than 900 women enrolled at 246 sites in 41 countries, who were randomly assigned to receive atezolizumab and chemo, or a placebo and chemo.

Standard chemotherapy was given every week. Atezolizumab was given intravenously every two weeks.

The women who received immunotherapy and chemo survived with no progression of cancer for a mean of 7.5 months, more than two months longer than women using chemotherapy and a placebo.

In women who tested positive for PD-L1, especially high levels of the protein, the response was even better. At the end of the trial those women had added another 2.5 progression-free months to their lives.

“We are particularly encouraged by the fact some patients are living without recurrence for an extended period of time,” said Norton. “Finding out why those patients do so much better than others is going to be one of the important topics for future research.”

The trial was funded by Roche, the maker of atezolizumab.</s>Women with an aggressive type of breast cancer lived longer if they received immunotherapy plus chemotherapy, rather than chemo alone, a major study has found.

The results are expected to change the standard of care for women like those in the clinical trial, who had advanced cases of “triple-negative” breast cancer. That form of the disease often resists standard therapies, and survival rates are poor.

Researchers said the new study was a long-awaited breakthrough for immunotherapy in breast cancer. Until now, most progress had been in other cancers, including lung cancer and melanoma.

The findings may lead to the first approval by the Food and Drug Administration or an immunotherapy drug to treat breast cancer.

Although triple-negative tumors occur in only about 15 percent of patients with invasive breast cancer in the United States (or nearly 40,000 each year), they account for a disproportionate share of deaths, as many as 30 percent to 40 percent.

“These women really needed a break,” said Dr. Ingrid Mayer, a breast cancer specialist at Vanderbilt University. “Nothing has worked well.”

Mayer, who was not part of the study, called the findings “very significant.” She said she had received consulting fees from seven drug companies, including Genentech of South San Francisco, which is the maker of the immunotherapy drug (brand name Tecentriq) in the study and paid for the research.

The findings were published Saturday in the New England Journal of Medicine.

The drugs generally work for fewer than half of patients but can bring lasting recoveries even to people who were severely ill. Side effects can be dangerous, even life-threatening, and treatment costs more than $100,000 a year.

The women in the study had triple-negative breast cancer that had been newly diagnosed and had become metastatic, meaning it had begun to spread. Once that occurs, the outlook is grim, with many patients surviving 18 months or less.

Half received chemo alone, and half were given chemo plus immunotherapy.

Among those who received the combination, the median survival was 21.3 months, compared with 17.6 months for those who received chemo alone. The difference was not statistically significant.

But when the researchers looked at women who had a marker called PD-L1 on their cancer cells, the results were striking: The median survival was 25 months in the combination group, versus 15.5 months with just chemo.

“This is truly a game changer,” said Dr. Sylvia Adams, an author of the study from New York University Langone Health’s Perlmutter Cancer Center.</s>The research, published in the New England Journal of Medicine, also showed that the combined treatment reduced the risk of death or the progressing of triple-negative breast cancer by up to 40 per cent

A treatment regime combining immunotherapy and chemotherapy can help tune the body's immune system to attack an aggressive type of breast cancer, extending survival by up to 10 months, show results of an immunotherapy trial in Britain.

The research, published in the New England Journal of Medicine, also showed that the combined treatment reduced the risk of death or the progressing of triple-negative breast cancer by up to 40 per cent.

"These results are a massive step forward," said author of the trial Peter Schmid, Professor of Cancer Medicine at Queen Mary University of London.

"We are changing how triple-negative breast cancer is treated in proving for the first time that immune therapy has a substantial survival benefit," Schmid, who is also the Clinical Director of the Breast Cancer Centre at St Bartholomew's Hospital in London, added.

Triple-negative breast cancer often affects young women, with many people diagnosed in their 40s or 50s.

The standard treatment is chemotherapy, which most patients quickly develop resistance to. If the disease spreads to other parts of the body, survival is often only 12 to 15 months.

The new treatment combines standard weekly chemotherapy with the immunotherapy medication atezolizumab which is given once every two weeks.

The combination works by chemotherapy 'roughening up' the surface of the cancer, which enables the immune system to better recognise and therefore fight the cancer as a foreign object, the study said.

"In a combined treatment approach, we are using chemotherapy to tear away the tumour's 'immune-protective cloak' to expose it as well as enabling people's own immune system to get at it," Schmid explained.

In the study, the researchers randomly assigned patients with untreated triple-negative breast cancer to receive atezolizumab plus chemotherapy medication nab-paclitaxel or placebo plus nab-paclitaxel. Each group included 451 patients.

The participants continued the intervention until disease progression or an unacceptable level of toxic effects occurred. The average follow-up period was more than a year.

The researchers found that combination of immunotherapy and chemotherapy can extend survival of breast cancer patients by up to 10 months.

Based on the results of this trial this new treatment is currently under review by health authorities in Britain.

"Triple-negative breast cancer is an aggressive form of breast cancer; we have been desperately looking for better treatment options. It is particularly tragic that those affected are often young, with many themselves having young families," Schmid said.

"I'm thrilled that by using a combination of immunotherapy and chemotherapy we are able to significantly extend lives compared to the standard treatment of chemotherapy alone."

Catch up on all the latest Crime, National, International and Hatke news here. Also download the new mid-day Android and iOS apps to get latest updates

This story has been sourced from a third party syndicated feed, agencies. Except for the change in headline, the story has been provided "AS-IS," "AS AVAILABLE, without any verification or editing from our side. Mid-day accepts no responsibility or liability for its dependability, trustworthiness, reliability and data of the text. Mid-day management/mid-day.com reserves the sole right to alter, delete or remove (without notice) the content in its absolute discretion for any reason whatsoever.</s>London, Oct 21 (IANS) A treatment regime combining immunotherapy and chemotherapy can help tune the body’s immune system to attack an aggressive type of breast cancer, extending survival by up to 10 months, show results of an immunotherapy trial in Britain.

The research, published in the New England Journal of Medicine, also showed that the combined treatment reduced the risk of death or the progressing of triple-negative breast cancer by up to 40 per cent.

“These results are a massive step forward,” said author of the trial Peter Schmid, Professor of Cancer Medicine at Queen Mary University of London.

“We are changing how triple-negative breast cancer is treated in proving for the first time that immune therapy has a substantial survival benefit,” Schmid, who is also the Clinical Director of the Breast Cancer Centre at St Bartholomew’s Hospital in London, added.

Triple-negative breast cancer often affects young women, with many people diagnosed in their 40s or 50s.

The standard treatment is chemotherapy, which most patients quickly develop resistance to. If the disease spreads to other parts of the body, survival is often only 12 to 15 months.

The new treatment combines standard weekly chemotherapy with the immunotherapy medication atezolizumab which is given once every two weeks.

The combination works by chemotherapy ‘roughening up’ the surface of the cancer, which enables the immune system to better recognise and therefore fight the cancer as a foreign object, the study said.

“In a combined treatment approach, we are using chemotherapy to tear away the tumour’s ‘immune-protective cloak’ to expose it as well as enabling people’s own immune system to get at it,” Schmid explained.

In the study, the researchers randomly assigned patients with untreated triple-negative breast cancer to receive atezolizumab plus chemotherapy medication nab-paclitaxel or placebo plus nab-paclitaxel. Each group included 451 patients.

The participants continued the intervention until disease progression or an unacceptable level of toxic effects occurred. The average follow-up period was more than a year.

The researchers found that combination of immunotherapy and chemotherapy can extend survival of breast cancer patients by up to 10 months.

Based on the results of this trial this new treatment is currently under review by health authorities in Britain.

“Triple-negative breast cancer is an aggressive form of breast cancer; we have been desperately looking for better treatment options. It is particularly tragic that those affected are often young, with many themselves having young families,” Schmid said.

“I’m thrilled that by using a combination of immunotherapy and chemotherapy we are able to significantly extend lives compared to the standard treatment of chemotherapy alone.”</s>An immunotherapy cocktail from Roche helped slow a type of breast cancer where new treatments have proven elusive, data released on Saturday showed, offering positive news for the Swiss drugmaker as it chases medicines produced by its rivals.

ZURICH/MUNICH: An immunotherapy cocktail from Roche helped slow a type of breast cancer where new treatments have proven elusive, data released on Saturday showed, offering positive news for the Swiss drugmaker as it chases medicines produced by its rivals.

Women with advanced triple-negative breast cancer lived a median 7.2 months without their disease worsening (PFS) with Roche's Tecentriq plus chemotherapy as an initial treatment, compared with 5.5 months for those getting chemotherapy alone.

Overall survival (OS) data from the IMpassion 130 study is not yet mature, but Roche Chief Medical Officer Sally Horning told Reuters she had reason for optimism.

Patients getting the Tecentriq cocktail lived a median 21.3 months, so far, compared to 17.6 months for those on chemotherapy, she said.

Horning said these results offered new hope for people struggling with a difficult disease where patients and doctors desperately need new treatment options.

"It's really extraordinary to see a survival benefit of any kind in triple-negative breast cancer," she said. "We're quite excited about the degree of effect."

Tecentriq's benefit was greater among the roughly 40 percent of triple-negative breast cancer patients in its study whose tumors had high levels of a protein known as PD-L1, that helps tumors avoid immune system detection, Horning added.

Interim OS data for that group showed patients lived a median of 25 months, compared to just 15.5 months on chemotherapy.

Roche has filed with regulators for approval.

Triple-negative tumors, which affect 15 percent of breast cancer patients, have no hormone receptors or HER2 receptors, so patients do not benefit from hormone therapy or HER2-targeting drugs like Roche's US$7 billion-per-year blockbuster Herceptin or GlaxoSmithKline's Tykerb.

Roche in July announced the 902-patient study had showed Tecentriq to chemotherapy boosted outcomes, but the specific data was released at the European Society for Medical Oncology's annual conference in Munich on Saturday.

With Roche's Tecentriq trailing immunotherapies from Merck and Bristol-Myers Squibb in the main form of lung cancer, Chief Executive Severin Schwan is pursuing smaller but still lucrative treatment areas where he can gain an approval head start.

So far, Tecentriq's sales are up 50 percent over the first nine months to 524 million Swiss francs (US$528 million), but that is a fraction of sales generated by blockbuster checkpoint inhibitors from Merck's Keytruda and Bristol's Opdivo.

Triple-negative breast cancer offers an opportunity, as does small cell lung cancer, where Roche also has a chance to be first to win the blessings of the regulators.

"Roche has more of a niche approach and is seeking to have clearly defined markets with dedicated studies," Gregoire Biollaz, fund manager at Pictet Asset Management, told Reuters.

Roche, the biggest maker of cancer drugs, needs Tecentriq to be a success. Roche's three biggest cancer drugs Avastin, Herceptin and Rituxan earn US$21 billion in annual sales, but patent expirations are already exposing them to competition from cheaper copies made by rivals.

Rivals are also pressing on with cancer drug development. Merck and Bristol-Myers Squibb are testing their own immunotherapy combinations against triple-negative disease, including with partners.</s>In many cases, breast cancer is considered a treatable disease — as long as it’s diagnosed early and treated with the proper combination of surgery, chemotherapy, radiation or targeted drugs. But triple-negative breast cancer has long been an exception.

The reason it’s so deadly is that these cancer cells lack the docking points for three proteins — the hormones estrogen and progesterone, and human epidermal growth factor receptor 2 (called HER2) — that effective drugs can latch on to in order to destroy tumors. Women diagnosed with triple-negative breast cancer, who make up 15% to 20% of breast cancer patients, often try chemotherapy after chemotherapy, working through each drug until their cancer starts growing again, at which point they move on to the next drug.

But in a presentation at the European Society for Medial Oncology in Munich, scientists reported that combining chemotherapy with an immunotherapy drug helped lower risk of their disease progressing, and of death, by 20% compared to women treated with chemotherapy alone. The research was conducted in 900 women with metastatic triple-negative breast cancer who were randomly assigned to receive the combination therapy or just chemotherapy.

“It’s very exciting, because now immunotherapy is actually coming to the triple-negative breast cancer population,” says Dr. Sylvia Adams, director of clinical breast cancer research at NYU’s Perlmutter Cancer Center and a co-author on the study. “We see women with durable responses without any evidence of cancer on their scans years later. That’s truly a victory.”

The results are especially encouraging since they apply to women who are treated with the immune and chemotherapy combination as their first treatment, before they are put through the standard therapy of cycling through chemotherapy drugs.

So far, using immunotherapy agents alone in treating breast cancer of any kind has not been successful. “There’s always been a question of whether there was even a role for immunotherapy in breast cancer,” says Dr. Jennifer Litton, from MD Anderson Cancer Center, who was not involved in the study but does research of other chemo and immunotherapy combinations. Researchers believe that’s because breast cancer cells tend not to have many mutations, and cancers with a greater number of mutations, such as lung cancers and skin cancers, are better at attracting immune cells to attack them.

But in 2014, Adams found that even in women with triple-negative breast cancer, there was evidence that some immune cells were trying to attack the cancer very early in the disease, and women who showed more of these immune responses early on tended to survive longer than those who did not. “That gave us the idea that if you can harness that immune response that’s already shown to affect survival, you can actually make big progress against this cancer,” she says. The problem was that the immune response waned over time.

More studies showed that the right chemotherapy — not necessarily in the same doses usually used to treat breast cancer, but in different forms of delivery where it was just enough to stimulate the immune system without destroying immune cells — could help to activate the immune system. And researchers like Adams began looking at combining specialized forms of chemo with immunotherapy drugs. “The combination can be harnessed to improve on the efficacy of both drugs,” she says. Timing the combination is critical, since the cocktail needs to take advantage of the short window early on in the disease when the immune system is at its most robust in targeting the cancer. The chemotherapy activates the immune cells, and the immunotherapy drugs enhance that immune activity against the tumors, leading to a powerful caner-fighting strategy.

“These results are a massive step forward,” said Dr. Peter Schmid, professor OF? cancer medicine at Queen Mary University of London and clinical director of the breast cancer center at St Bartholomew’s Hospital and the study’s lead author, in a statement. “We are changing how triple-negative breast cancer is treated in proving for the first time that immune therapy has a substantial survival benefit.”

Schmid and Adams found that some women in the study had an even greater response to the combination therapy. Those women had cancer cells that carried a protein, known as PDL1, that is specifically targeted by the immunotherapy drug.

“This study is proof of principle that we should keep going,” Litton says. She is investigating whether there is a way for people who have already started chemotherapy to learn whether they will respond to the standard cycle of chemotherapy drugs, or should be switched to immunotherapy combinations for better results.

Adams is also hopeful that other immunotherapy drugs may be developed that are more effective in activating the immune system against breast cancer cells specifically. “I expect these results will really invigorate the field and bring new research to help patients,” she says.</s>Scientists say a new treatment is showing promise in the fight against aggressive breast cancer. Three years ago, at age 39, Maribel Ramos was diagnosed with advanced breast cancer. The type was triple negative.

"I was angry and sad," Ramos said. "Because I know that the triple negative is a type of cancer that is really hard to treat."

Ten to 20 percent of breast cancers are called triple negative because they don't have receptors - such as ones for estrogen - that can be targeted by certain medications. Treatment options are limited, and these cancers tend to be more aggressive, with worse outcomes.

 

 In 2016, Ramos entered a trial to test the immunotherapy drug Tecentriq on patients with advanced triple negative breast cancer.

The drug works by targeting proteins found on immune cells and some cancer cells. It's approved for bladder and one type of lung cancer.

Dr. Sylvia Adams of NYU-Langone Health was one of the trial investigators. She says the new drug helps the immune system recognize the cancer.

"There are killer cells already in the cancer present and ready to fight, except that this cancer shields itself from the from the immune attack," Adams said. "So this drug is now able to take the shield down and basically paves the way for your own immune response to kill the tumor."

The trial, at hundreds of sites in 41 countries, followed 902 patients and found the combination of immunotherapy and chemotherapy improved overall survival by nearly four months, (3.7 months) and nearly 10 months for those patients whose tumors tested positive for the targeted protein.

"Hopefully this will actually improve the treatments for many other women with breast cancer as well," Adams said.

"The tumor was getting smaller," Ramos said. "So every time, every four weeks it was getting smaller and smaller and I was so excited."

"The last scan from just last week that shows that she's still completely without any evidence of disease," Adams said.

Three years ago, Ramos worried she wouldn't see her oldest daughter graduate. In June, she did.</s>A new treatment could offer up to ten months extra life for women with one of the most aggressive forms of breast cancer, following a successful British trial.

Using a combination of immunotherapy and chemotherapy, the body’s own immune system can be tuned to attack triple-negative breast cancer, scientists found.

The research, carried out by Queen Mary University of London (QMUL) and St Bartholomew’s Hospital, also showed that the combined treatment reduced the risk of death or the cancer progressing by up to 40 per cent.

Professor Peter Schmid, a professor of cancer medicine at QMUL and the author of the trial, described the results as a “massive step forward”.

“Triple-negative breast cancer is an aggressive form of breast cancer; we have been desperately looking for better treatment options,” he said.

“It is particularly tragic that those affected are often young, with many themselves having young families.”

Triple-negative breast cancer is one of the most deadly forms of the disease and nearly one quarter of patients diagnosed will not survive for more than five years.

The standard treatment for it is chemotherapy, which most patients quickly develop resistance to. If the disease spreads to other parts of the body, survival is typically only 12 to 15 months.

But with the new treatment, researchers say that survival could be extended by up to ten months.

Prof Schmid, who is clinical director of the Breast Cancer Centre at St Bartholomew’s Hospital, explained that he new treatment will “significantly extend lives compared to the standard treatment of chemotherapy alone.”

“We are changing how triple-negative breast cancer is treated in proving for the first time that immune therapy has a substantial survival benefit,” he said.

“In a combined treatment approach, we are using chemotherapy to tear away the tumour’s ‘immune-protective cloak’ to expose it as well as enabling people’s own immune system to get at it.”
A research study published in The New England Journal of Medicine describes a significant mortality response to the immunotherapy Atezolizumab used in conjunction with the chemotherapy nab-paclitaxel for a type of untreatable Breast cancer (Triple-negative) when the tumors also display programmed death ligand 1 (PD-L1) expression.