
Last year in the UK over 60,000 cancer patients enrolled on clinical trials aimed at improving cancer treatments and making them available to all.
This trial looked at tremelimumab for advanced food pipe (oesophageal) and stomach (gastric) cancer. Tremelimumab is also called CP-675206, and used to be called ticilimumab.
Doctors usually treat food pipe and stomach cancer with surgery, chemotherapy or radiotherapy. But sometimes the cancer starts to grow again or spreads to another part of the body. When this happens it is often more difficult to treat.
Tremelimumab is a type of biological therapy called a monoclonal antibody. It works by triggering the body’s immune system to attack cancer cells. Doctors hoped it would be useful for cancer that had started to grow again.
The aims of this trial were to find out
The research team found that tremelimumab did affect the immune system. But that it didn’t work as well as they had hoped as a treatment for stomach and food pipe cancer.
This trial recruited 18 people with advanced cancer
They had all had cisplatin chemotherapy before, but their cancer had continued to grow.
They had tremelimumab into a vein once every 3 months. Each 3 month period is one cycle of treatment. 12 people taking part had 1 cycle, 5 people had 2 cycles, and 1 person had 11 cycles of treatment.
The research team looked at and found that the levels of
and
went down for some patients but up for others. The people whose levels went down generally did better than those whose levels went up.
They also looked at how well the cancer responded to treatment. They found that
The person whose cancer got smaller was still doing well when the results of this trial were published, 2 years and 8 months after they started treatment.
The side effects of tremelimumab were mostly mild, but 1 person unfortunately died after developing a hole in their bowel (bowel perforation). This is a known but very rare side effect of this particular type of monoclonal antibody.
The most common side effects were itching, a rash, tiredness (fatigue), diarrhoea and a drop in white blood cells called eosinophils.
The research team concluded that although the overall response wasn’t as good as they had hoped, the one very good response meant that tremelimumab should be looked at again in further trials.
We have based this summary on information from the team who ran the trial. The information they sent us has been reviewed by independent specialists () and published in a medical journal. The figures we quote above were provided by the trial team. We have not analysed the data ourselves.
Please note: In order to join a trial you will need to discuss it with your doctor, unless otherwise specified.
Professor Robert Hawkins
Pfizer
The Christie NHS Foundation Trust
If you have questions about the trial please contact our cancer information nurses
Freephone 0808 800 4040
Last year in the UK over 60,000 cancer patients enrolled on clinical trials aimed at improving cancer treatments and making them available to all.