New drug for the treatment of six different cancers

Drug creeps into cells and destroys them from within

Experts have now developed a cancer drug that works like a kind of Trojan horse. It virtually creeps into diseased cells and allows effective treatment of six different forms of cancer, even though the disease is already at an advanced stage and other treatments are no longer effective.

The scientists from the Institute of Cancer Research and the Royal Marsden Hospital have developed a cancer drug in their current research that can be used to effectively treat six forms of cancer. The physicians published the results of their study in the English language journal "The Lancet Oncology".

A drug called tisotumab vedotin could enable the treatment of various types of advanced cancer in the future. (Image: fotoliaxrender / fotolia.com)

Drug enters cells and causes poisoning

The drug has been shown to be extremely effective in advanced cancer patients, although the disease is no longer responsive to other types of treatment, the study's authors say. The newly developed drug creeps into the cells like a Trojan horse, releasing a toxic substance that kills the cells. A significant minority of tumors shrank or stopped growing for an average of 5.7 to 9.5 months.

In which types of cancer was the drug effective?

About 27 percent of patients with bladder cancer, 27 percent of women with cervical cancer and 14 percent of women with ovarian cancer benefited from the new treatment. In addition, the drug was also used in 13 percent of subjects with esophageal carcinoma, in 13 percent of patients with non-small cell lung carcinoma and in seven percent of subjects with endometrial carcinoma.

Tisotumab Vedotin has been tested on nearly 150 patients

The innovative new drug Tisotumab Vedotin releases a toxic substance that kills cancer cells from the inside. The drug was tested for the study in nearly 150 patients. The results were so positive that further studies and other types of cancer should be considered now. These include, for example, colon cancer, pancreatic, lung and head and neck cancer.

Further studies are being carried out

The majority of patients in the early study had advanced cancer, which had already spread locally or throughout the body, the physicians explain. On average, the subjects had already been unsuccessfully treated with three different types of anticancer therapy. The exciting thing about the treatment being studied is that its mechanism of action is completely new. The drug acts like a Trojan horse to sneak into cancer cells and kill them from within, explains study author Professor Johann de Bono of the Institute of Cancer Research. The drug has the potential to treat a large number of different types of cancer, especially some in which sufferers have a very low survival rate.

The drug has manageable side effects and overall positive results were obtained in the study. Scientists have already begun additional studies on this new drug in various tumor types and as a second-line treatment for cervical cancer, where response rates were particularly high. In addition, a test is being developed to identify the patients most likely to respond to the drug. (As)