A study, published in Nature，reports that scientists from Queen Mary University of London have made a breakthrough in developing a new therapy for advanced bladder cancer where there have been no major treatment advances in the past 30 years.
They examined an examined an antibody (MPDL3280A) which blocks a protein (PD-L1) thought to help cancer cells evade immune detection. As indicated, the antibody show positive effectiveness in shrinking tumours in a phase one, multi-centre international trials.
As the subjects enrolled in this study, 68 patients with advanced bladder cancer -who had failed all other standard treatments such as chemotherapy – received MPDL3280A, a cancer immunotherapy medicine being developed by Roche. And patients were all tested for the protein PD-L1 and around 30 were identified as having PD-L1 positive tumours.
After 6 weeks of treatment, 43 per cent of PD-L1-positive patients found their tumour had shrunk. This rose to 52 per cent after 12 weeks of follow up. In two of these patients (7 per cent) radiological imaging found no evidence of the cancer at all following the treatment. Among PD-L1 negative patients, 11 percent responded positively to treatment too.
The early results of this trial are so promising, the MPDL3280A antibody drug has been given breakthrough therapy designation status by the U.S. FDA. It gives hope to the thousands of people affected by advanced bladder cancer each year. As researchers see, this investigational drug had a striking response rate, and by screening its target protein PD-L1 they can offer the tailored treatments to patients with PD-L1 mutations.
Another citation, published in the same issue of Nature, reported broader results of this phase one study for the antibody MPDL3280A, with data from people with lung, kidney, colon or head & neck cancers authored by Roy Herbst, MD, PhD of the Yale Cancer Centre.
References:
MPDL3280A (anti-PD-L1) treatment leads to clinical activity in metastatic bladder cancer. Nature, 2014; 515 (7528): 558
Predictive correlates of response to the anti-PD-L1 antibody MPDL3280A in cancer patients. Nature, 2014; 515 (7528): 563