(Newswire.net — July 2, 2018) –On June 25, a clinical trial showed positive and hopeful results for Swiss drugmaker Roche’s immunotherapy cocktail that is intended for treating an aggressive form of lung cancer.
Immunotherapy is a treatment that uses a cancer patient’s immune system to combat the spread of cancer. Immunotherapy regimens work by stimulating the immune system to work harder or more efficiently to battle the cancer, as well as by supplementing a patient’s immune system with synthetic boosters.
Roche reported that the drug, taken together with chemotherapy, improved patients’ chances of survival as well as their quality of life, compared to those patients being treated with only chemotherapy. The company said that specific data and results from the study would be released at an upcoming medical conference.
If approved for use, Tecentriq will be the first drug of its kind for use with aggressive lung cancers. A different drug, made by competitor drugmaker Merck, called Keytruda, has already been approved for use as a treatment for more common types of lung cancer.
As a result of the positive results that emerged from the trial, Roche’s company stock was seen to rise 1.1 percent. Tecentriq is a central part of Roche’s strategy of bringing to market a group of new drugs in order to offset massive losses in sales from its drugs Rituxan, Herceptin and Avastin which have been pushed aside by cheaper copycat drugs.
This new clinical trial follows in the wake of similiar promising immunotherapy trials conducted last year for other types of aggressive cancers such as mesothelioma. Mesothelioma is a an aggressive and rare cancer directly linked to asbestos exposure, sometimes occurring decades after.
According to the Vogelzang Law Group which specializes in mesothelioma, “New developments in a French clinical trial have indicated that immunotherapy may slow the growth of cancer cells after chemotherapy treatment and the subsequent relapse.”
Overall, in the immunotherapy trials, researchers are investigating the use of immunotherapy drugs in the hope that they will succeed in penetrating the protective shield that aggressive cancer cells build around themselves.