New clinical trial find that immune drug ‘nivolumab’ improve immune system to fight against most common form of lung cancer. Nivolumab increases the survival rate among those patients who suffering from squamous non-small cell lung cancer.
Research said patients taking nivolumab have 27% lesser risk of death with comparison to patients taking docetaxel – a commonly used chemotherapy medication.
Research shows that this drug helps patients to live longer then the patients having chemotherapy, on an average. According to Julie Brahmer, M.D., at the Johns Hopkins Kimmel Cancer Center, it has been a major achievement in the 20 years. This drug as a lung cancer treatment option is the solid immunotherapy for lung cancer system.
Patients those taking nivolumab were survive 9.5 months in comparison to patients who were taking docetaxel were survive 6 months. If we go with number or percentage for survival comparison then: 57 patients, approximately 42%, who taking nivolumab was alive in comparison with 33 patients, approximately 24%, who taking docetaxel was alive.
“Nivolumab, marketed as Opdivo, is a fully human IgG4 anti-PD-1 monoclonal antibody developed by Ono Pharmaceutical and Medarex (later acquired by Bristol-Myers Squibb) for the treatment of cancer. Nivolumab acts as an immunomodulator by blocking ligand activation of the programmed cell death 1 (PD-1) receptor on activated T cells.” – wikipedia.org information.
Research made on tracked record of 272 patients who had advanced squamous cell NSCLC. From this group of people some was taking nivolumab while others taking docetaxel. Group f patients who taking nivolumab have fewer side effects in compared with those who taking docetaxel.
In the Spanish trial, only one in ten patients experienced serious side effects with nivolumab in comparison to more than half of patients taking docetaxel.
In the last, as I study and read more than a dozen of articles based on this research, this is a good sign for squamous non-small cell lung cancer patients that there is a more survival rate with nivolumab regular use. This study published in the New England Journal of Medicine, go there for detail.