Cancer ResearchShort immunotherapy course before surgery keeps bowel cancer patients recurrence-free for nearly three years
A small clinical trial suggests a brief course of immunotherapy before surgery may give lasting protection against one genetic form of bowel cancer. In the NEOPRISM-CRC trial, 32 patients with stage two or three disease received the drug pembrolizumab for up to nine weeks before surgery, instead of the usual chemotherapy afterward. After 33 months of follow-up, none had a recurrence. That included patients who still had small traces of disease after treatment, and those traces did not grow or spread. Earlier results showed 59% had no detectable disease after treatment and surgery. By comparison, about 25% of patients on the standard surgery-plus-chemotherapy path are expected to relapse within three years. Researchers also developed personalized blood tests to show early whether treatment worked, which could help doctors give less treatment to some patients and more to others. The trial is small and has no control group, so larger studies are needed. Even so, the results point toward more precise, less burdensome cancer care.
