Immunotherapy shows clinical benefit in relapsed transplant recipients
2014-12-09
(Press-News.org) A multicenter phase 1 trial of the immune checkpoint blocker ipilimumab found clinical benefit in nearly half of blood cancer patients who had relapsed following allogeneic stem cell transplantation, according to investigators from Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, who developed and lead the study.
The study reported at the American Society of Hematology annual meeting is the first in which ipilimumab was given in multiple doses over an extended time period, the researchers said.
At a median follow-up time of six months, "We have seen less toxicity than expected and a strong efficacy signal, and that's very encouraging in a population that does not have many therapeutic options," said Matthew S. Davids, MD, MMSc, medical oncologist at Dana-Farber, the first author on the abstract. Robert J. Soiffer, MD, chief of the Division of Hematologic Malignancies at Dana-Farber is the senior author.
The 13 patients in the study had been treated for a variety of hematological cancers and had suffered relapse a median of 19 months following transplant from a related or unrelated donor. Ipilimumab, which blocks the CTLA4 immune checkpoint to augment the patient's immune response to the cancer, was given every three weeks for four induction cycles, then every 12 weeks for up to a year.
Nine patients were discontinued - eight because of disease progression and another who developed chronic graft-versus-host disease (GVHD). Four patients remain on treatment, and the six-month survival rate is 65 percent, the investigators reported.
The preliminary evaluation found that five of 11patients (45.4 percent) who were evaluable for response had clinical benefit. One patient, who had Hodgkin lymphoma, had a near complete response, with dramatic shrinkage of tumors that had spread widely in the bones, and had a complete marrow response after only seven weeks of treatment. Additional partial responses were seen in a patient with multiple myeloma and in a patient with acute myelogenous leukemia. A complete response was seen after just one dose of ipilimumab in a patient with myelodysplastic syndrome. According to the investigators, this represents the first responses to ipilimumab ever observed in patients with myeloid malignancies. The higher of two doses of ipilimumab is currently being given in a phase 1b expansion cohort, and "we've already seen some encouraging results in these patients," Davids commented.
The Cancer Therapy Evaluation Program of the National Cancer Institute sponsors the trial (CTEP 9204, NCT01822509), which is funded in part from an NIH R01to Soiffer (NIH R01 CA183560) and from a grant from the Leukemia & Lymphoma Society Blood Cancer Research Partnership, which helps to facilitate the multicenter component of the trial.
INFORMATION:
ELSE PRESS RELEASES FROM THIS DATE:
2014-12-09
A study that investigated the potential of the compound PRM-151 (PRM) for reducing progressive bone marrow fibrosis (scarring) in patients with advanced myelofibrosis has shown initial positive results. Myelofibrosis is a life-threatening bone marrow cancer.
The study, led by Srdan Verstovsek, M.D., Ph.D., professor of leukemia at The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center, showed the compound was well tolerated in observing 27 patients. Verstovsek's research results were presented today at the 56th Annual Meeting of the American Society of Hematology (ASH) annual ...
2014-12-09
Aiming to empower planners and policy-makers to achieve better health for billions of people living in fast-growing urban areas, world health, environmental, behavioural and social science experts today launched a major new interdisciplinary scientific collaboration.
Programme goals:
Empowering planners and policy-makers with better science to create healthy urban environments and improve wellbeing;
Identify and manage unintended health consequences of urban policy;
Understand connections between cities and planetary change
Leading the consortium of science ...
2014-12-09
Opposing views on the potential impact of electronic cigarettes on public health are published in the open access journal BMC Medicine. The commentaries, by two experts, differ in their views on the topic but are united in their call for a rational discussion based on evidence.
The authors examine the WHO's recommendations earlier this year. One recommendation was that smokers should not use e-cigarettes and has now been withdrawn, and the other is that policymakers should implement their strict regulation, which is still in force.
In one of the commentaries, Peter ...
2014-12-09
Sophia Antipolis, 09 December 2014: Heart disease patients have been advised to avoid being outside during rush hour traffic in a paper published today in European Heart Journal.1 The position paper on air pollution and cardiovascular disease was written by experts from the European Society of Cardiology and also recommends decreasing the use of fossil fuels.
Professor Robert F. Storey, corresponding author of the paper, said: "More than 3 million deaths worldwide are caused by air pollution each year. Air pollution ranks ninth among the modifiable disease risk factors, ...
2014-12-09
There is no need to spray insecticide on walls for malaria control when people sleep under treated bed nets, according to new research.
Use of insecticide sprayed on internal walls, when combined with insecticide-treated bed nets in homes, does not protect children from malaria any more effectively than using just insecticide-treated bed nets, the research led by Durham University and the Medical Research Council's Unit in The Gambia found.
The researchers said this was important as insecticide-treated nets and insecticide sprayed on walls are commonly used for controlling ...
2014-12-09
The system that allows patients rapid access to expensive new treatments lacks transparency and penalises small and low-income countries unable to negotiate lower prices with pharmaceutical manufacturers. Writing in the Journal of the Royal Society of Medicine, the authors of an essay on market-access agreements for anti-cancer drugs, say that while the underlying strategy is to help reduce the likelihood of health systems paying for treatments that turn out not to be cost-effective, the agreements can also be seen as an opportunistic way for pharmaceutical manufacturers ...
2014-12-09
Donald Trump's ego may be the size of his financial empire, but that doesn't mean he's the picture of mental health. The same can be said about the self-esteem of people who are living from paycheck to paycheck, or unemployed. New research from the University of California, Berkeley, underscores this mind-wallet connection.
UC Berkeley researchers have linked inflated or deflated feelings of self-worth to such afflictions as bipolar disorder, narcissistic personality disorder, anxiety and depression, providing yet more evidence that the widening gulf between rich and ...
2014-12-09
The combined use of spraying insecticide inside homes and insecticide-treated bed nets is no better at protecting children against malaria than using bed nets alone, a study in The Gambia suggests. The findings, published in The Lancet, should encourage donors to invest their limited resources in additional bed nets, the more cost-effective solution to tackling malaria*.
Lead author Professor Steve Lindsay, a disease ecologist at Durham University in the UK explains, "Our findings do not support any universal recommendation for indoor residual spraying as an addition ...
2014-12-09
The mass die-off of nerve cells in the brains of people with Alzheimer's disease may largely occur because an entirely different class of brain cells, called microglia, begin to fall down on the job, according to a new study by researchers at the Stanford University School of Medicine.
The researchers found that, in mice, blocking the action of a single molecule on the surface of microglia restored the cells' ability to get the job done -- and reversed memory loss and myriad other Alzheimer's-like features in the animals.
The study, to be published online Dec. 8 in ...
2014-12-09
1. Breast density notification laws substantially increase costs yet save few lives
Laws requiring women to be notified of their breast density so that they may discuss supplemental screening options, including ultrasound, with their health care providers would substantially increase costs and save relatively few lives, according to an article published in Annals of Internal Medicine. More than 40 percent of women between the ages of 40 and 74 have dense breast tissue, which puts them at increased risk for breast cancer and affects how well a mammogram can detect abnormalities. ...
LAST 30 PRESS RELEASES:
[Press-News.org] Immunotherapy shows clinical benefit in relapsed transplant recipients
