Given that the term “cancer” refers to more than 100 distinct diseases, finding promising new advancements in treatment, detection, and prevention requires a collaborative effort. An additional distinguishing feature? Every diagnosis might be as distinct as the patient’s.
Fortunately, cancer research is still going strong even after we’ve completed almost 25% of the 21st century. The FDA approved 12 new uses for cancer medicines that were already approved, as well as 14 novel anti-cancer therapeutics between August 1, 2022, and July 31, 2023.
These developments give us optimism for the continued fight against cancer and our shared ultimate goal of curing it. Here are a few of the most encouraging advances in cancer research from the previous year.
CAR T-cell treatment
The National Cancer Institute states that CAR T-cell therapy “enlists and strengthens the power of the patient’s immune system to attack tumors” by attaching chimeric antigen receptors (CAR) to T-cells.
T-cells, which are white blood cells that support your body’s immune system in battling infection and other foreign substances, are also referred to as T-lymphocytes. It was discovered by researchers that T-cell receptors bind to dangerous antigens, such as cancer, to eradicate the illness.
In CAR T-cell treatment, the patient’s blood is used to extract the T cells, and a lab uses that blood sample to give the T cells the CAR gene.
The body does not normally create the synthetic molecule known as the CAR protein. On the other hand, CAR T-cells proliferate and enhance T-cells’ capacity to identify and eliminate cancer cells when the CAR gene is attached to T-cells and the modified cells are injected into the body of a cancer patient.
The treatment was first administered to leukemia patients in children and adults more than ten years ago, and numerous long-term trials have demonstrated its efficacy. In one, a group of cancer patients who had been labeled as “virtually untreatable” following a leukemia relapse received CAR T-cell therapy. After five years, follow-ups revealed that about 62% of that group had experienced remission. A considerable proportion of patients who received the treatment remained in remission for more than ten years, according to a smaller research.
More clinical trials to test the therapy on pancreatic, prostate, lung, breast, and other cancers as well as several autoimmune illnesses have been made possible by these and other results.
FLASH-RT
For over a century, radiation treatment has been utilized to treat a range of cancers. Owing to the severe side effects of radiation, the treatment is typically administered gradually over a few minutes, delivering multiple lesser doses of radiation.
A ground-breaking study conducted on animals in 2014 discovered that extremely high radiation exposure greatly reduced harm to healthy surrounding tissue while having an equivalent effect on tumors. Almost ten years and over thirty investigations later, the results have been positively repeated, with the first human study scheduled for 2022, despite the initial skepticism surrounding the findings.
During a FLASH-RT procedure, a patient is exposed to intense radiation bursts, usually lasting less than a second. There have been fewer side effects and harm to healthy tissue when this powerful radiation blast is administered at the same dose as standard radiation therapy.
This holds promise for more comprehensive cancer treatments; for instance, patients receiving FLASH-RT might respond better to immunotherapies as the radiation does not harm good cells as much.
Additionally, as children are now more vulnerable to the negative effects of radiation therapy, FLASH-RT might be an elective treatment for pediatric cancers.
Higher radiation doses than previously believed are conceivable, which opens the door to treating diseases like brain, lung, and gastrointestinal tumors for which radiation therapy was previously considered dangerous.
But don’t count on FLASH-RT to become a therapy option anytime soon. For the treatment to be safe and effective for cancer patients, scientists and doctors must first grasp the biology and mechanics underlying it, as they still do not fully understand how and why it works.
The injection for cancer
Atezolizumab, the first cancer injection in history, was made available by the National Health Service in the United Kingdom in August. The injection takes roughly seven minutes to administer. The immunotherapy medicine is usually given through an intravenous treatment that lasts anywhere from thirty to sixty minutes. An estimated 3,600 cancer patients in the United Kingdom were expected to begin injectable therapies for a range of malignancies, including bladder, breast, liver, and lung cancers.
AI and cancer
Emerging technologies like artificial intelligence and machine learning have the power to upend or completely change several industries, including the cancer treatment sector.
Researchers at Mass General Cancer Centre and Massachusetts Institute of Technology have developed Sybil, an AI-learning model trained on complex imaging data of lung cancer patients. Lung cancer is the deadliest cancer in the United States, killing more people than the next three combined.
Sybil utilizes a CT scan to estimate a person’s likelihood of developing lung cancer over the next six years. She does this by using imaging data from patients with lung cancer, both before and after diagnosis.
Another cancer that is hard to diagnose and has a less than 20% survival rate is pancreatic cancer. The implications of employing artificial intelligence (AI) to identify patients with a high risk of pancreatic cancer are being studied by researchers at Harvard Medical School, the University of Copenhagen, and the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute. A patient’s chance of survival rises to 50% if pancreatic cancer is discovered early.
AI may also be used to analyze imaging scans and detect tumors in situations when oncology radiologists might not be present. Artificial intelligence chatbots can assist patients with scheduling, reminders, and general treatment navigation.