After chemo and immunotherapy fail, lung cancer drug shrinks tumors in 43% of patients

A drug already used to treat certain lung cancers is showing promising results in people with head and neck cancers that no longer respond to standard treatment, a new study reveals.

Among 102 patients who tried the experimental treatment, 43 saw their tumors shrink, according to Earth.com.

What's happening?

The study evaluated amivantamab in 102 people with recurrent or metastatic head and neck cancer that had kept advancing after platinum-based chemotherapy and immunotherapy. 

All patients in this part of the trial had HPV-negative disease, a form that can be especially hard to treat, Earth.com noted.

Patients received the drug on its own as an under-the-skin injection once every three weeks. Because it does not require the hours-long IV process used for some cancer treatments, it can reportedly be administered in minutes in an outpatient clinic.

Given the dire situation of patients, the drug delivered impressive results.

Tumor reduction was reported in 43 patients, including 15 whose scans showed no detectable cancer. Many participants began to experience that shrinkage within about six weeks, and median overall survival was roughly 12.5 months.

Earth.com noted that a conventional treatment, Cetuximab, aids only a small number of patients and the improvements don't last, according to an exhaustive study.

Why does it matter?

By the time surgery, radiation, chemotherapy, and immunotherapy have stopped helping, people with head and neck cancer often have very little left to try. The targeted treatments available at that point have historically benefited only a minority of patients, and those gains have often been short-lived.

That is why a response rate above 40% in such a heavily treated population stands out. Seeing the cancer disappear from scans in 15 patients is also unusual after several earlier lines of therapy have failed.

Early trial results do not mean a new standard treatment will arrive overnight, but they can help shape larger studies, hospital practices, and discussions between patients and doctors.

What's being done?

Researchers are moving ahead with bigger studies to learn whether amivantamab can repeat these results and whether pairing it with other drugs could improve them further, Earth.com said. The current trial included 55 hospitals across 11 countries.

If the treatment becomes more widely available, its short injection format could also mean less time in the clinic than therapies that require lengthy infusions.

As Earth.com reported, side effects were generally mild to moderate, and fewer than 10 patients stopped treatment because of them.

Carl Walsh, 56, was one of the participants in the study who achieved the most remarkable results. Before joining the trial, swelling had made it difficult for him to eat and speak.

 "I now feel able to live a normal life," Walsh said, according to Earth.com.

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