Immunotherapy involves stimulating the patient’s immune defenses to fight cancer. The usual treatment for cervical cancer has been improved by adding this therapeutic strategy and has increased the life expectancy of patients.
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Immunotherapy can improve the life expectancy of cervical cancer patients. This announcement was made at the European Society for Medical Oncology (ESMO) cancer congress in Barcelona, which brings together 25,000 cancer specialists from Friday 13 to Tuesday 17 September.
This new treatment based on immunotherapy concerns hundreds of patients in France. Of the 3,000 new cases each year in France, there are 850 women who suffer from locally advanced cervical cancer. For them, the usual treatment (chemotherapy plus radiotherapy) has been improved by adding immunotherapy. This has increased the life expectancy of these patients by 8%.
“Previously, when patients had a relapse or were initially diagnosed with advanced cervical cancer, there was real distress and apart from support, there was not much we could do”says Coralie Marjollet, president of Imagyn, an association of patients and relatives affected by pelvic gynecological cancers. “There, we saw young patients being able to plan for the future.”
“What we hope is that we will be able to increase the chances of curing this cervical cancer with this treatment.”adds Benoît You, oncologist at the Hospices Civils de Lyon, who supervised this study and who hopes that the new treatment will soon be generalized. “We will obviously need a little more time, because we can only really make a decision when we have the five-year data. But already, at three years, the results are very, very encouraging.”
For the moment, this immunotherapy treatment is not reimbursed by Social Security, but it is covered by hospitals for patients with advanced cervical cancer.