Cancer Drug Enables Immune System

Imagine a drug that enables the body’s immune system to seek and destroy cancerous tumors with as much finesse as a heat seeking scud missile, and you might come up with something similar to ipillimumab, a breakthrough drug manufactured by Bristol-Myers Squibb and indicated to treat melanoma.

This experimental drug has been shown to extend the lives of patients in the latter throes of melanoma, the deadliest form of skin cancer, and it just might be ushering in a new wave of cancer drugs:  those that help the body’s immune system heal itself from cancer.

Ipilimumab is referred to by researchers as an “engineered human protein” that works by attacking a certain molecule that puts a halt on the immune system.  By interfering with this impediment, the immune system is then freed to execute a direct hit on melanoma and other malignant tumors.

According to a study by Dr. Stephen Hodi of the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute in Boston, 20% of melanoma patients participating in a clinical trial of the experimental drug were still alive two years after initially receiving it.  

Researchers have long been speculating and trying to prove that the immune system can be enabled to fight cancer, but this study is the first one that actually puts a definitive spin on this theory (Reuters). 

Researchers do contend, however, that more work needs to be done to determine a particular “cocktail” that combines several compounds, along with ipillimumab, to optimally provide cancer patients with a viable treatment that works in tandem with the immune system.