One of the primary reasons why we believe the time is right for this new kind of cancer magazine is what transpired just a few months ago.
In late April, Moderna, the pharmaceutical and biotech company that we were all introduced to during the Covid-19 pandemic, and Merck, the global pharmaceutical company, announced the results of a pivotal Phase 2 clinical trial that combines Moderna’s personalized mRNA cancer vaccine and Merck’s blockbuster immunotherapy drug Keytruda for people with melanoma.
Keytruda, a versatile immunotherapy treatment, has already been approved for more than a dozen types of cancer. But teaming it up with a vaccine was a newer idea.
In the trial, which I wrote about for Healthline and other publications, the drug-vax combination reduced the risk of death or recurrence of melanoma, the most deadly type of skin cancer, by 44% compared with Merck’s immunotherapy Keytruda alone.
This was of course blockbuster news for the immunotherapy and vaccine industries and most importantly very encouraging news for people with melanoma, the most invasive skin cancer.
And this wasn’t an isolated case. Several immunotherapies have made their way from the lab to the clinic. Some work with vaccines, while others work on their own. There are multiple types of immunotherapy. But they are all working in one way or another with our body’s own defenses.
The success we are seeing now in the immunotherapy sector is largely the result of support from longstanding advocates such as Mike Milken and the folks at the Cancer Research Institute (CRI), whose focus on the immune system has resulted in millions of lives saved worldwide.
These pioneers and others believed in immunotherapy when many scientists were still skeptical at best. But that has mostly washed away. We absolutely know now that we have an immune system. And every day we learn more about how it works and how we can use it to save our own lives.
Patients are now actually in the fight! It’s no longer just about taking a pill or getting an injection. Cancer patients are now on the playing field, fighting cancer with our own bodies. This is an entirely new paradigm for cancer patients. And it is empowering to say the least.
Poll after poll tells us that when cancer patients are actually fighting cancer with weapons in our own bodies, we feel much more invested in and connected to their care. And yes, the outcomes are demonstrably better. Finally and thankfully, the patient is now actually a part of the treatment and healing process.
What Is The Immune System?
According to the City of Hope, the immune system is “an efficient and powerful biological machine. Think of it as an invisible bio army that protects you from millions of germs and fights off viruses and infections. So powerful are its responses that when using them they may cause fevers, aches and pains, inflammation and swelling.”
Scientists are learning more every day about how to best deploy the immune system to fight cancer. They are already developing new drugs and technologies that are already saving lives in clinical trials and in the clinic. One of those is CAR T immunotherapy, which uses the patient’s own T cells to fight the cancer.
Ketyruda On a Roll
Keytruda is probably the best known immunotherapy to date. Keytruda is a checkpoint inhibitor treatment that is now approved for more than a dozen types of cancer. I’ve written about Keytruda extensively for a number of years.
If any drug has earned the right to be called a “wonder drug,” it is Keytruda. And I’m overjoyed to say that the world is getting the first look at what can happen when you combine an effective immunotherapy with a personalized cancer vaccine. The sky is the limit.
This is going to be an enormous part of the future of cancer medicine. And that is what this magazine is all about. The positive future.
It has already begun. Right here. Right now. The next step for these two medicines is of course the Phase 3 trial, which could lead to a new and very effective option for people with melanoma.
This combo treatment is just the beginning of the cancer vaccine-cancer drug combination and of the real progress we have made in immunotherapy, whose supporters have been unwavering in their dedication to this modality.
Milken has dedicated a big part of his life to the idea that this could be a game-changing medicine decades before the world began to open their eyes and minds to the idea that we all have an immune system. His influence has been enormous.
An Early Believer
I was a very early believer in immunotherapy. And I am alive because of it. From a young age, I firmly believed that we all have an immune system. It’s common sense. Just look at all the toxic and potentially destructive things all around us that we encounter every day, consciously or not.
I’m alive because of an early radio-immunotherapy that not a lot of people have heard about. In late 1996, I was diagnosed with advanced stage IV non-Hodgkin’s follicular lymphoma. My oncologist told me I would be lucky to live three years. But I had other plans.
I was originally treated with a type of chemotherapy called CHOP. It was rough. It gave me a remission. But two and a half years later I was back in the trenches.
When my oncologist told me he wanted to do CHOP again, I said no. I took charge of my situation. First thing I did was get a new oncologist who was frankly smarter, kinder and more open-minded about my desire to enroll in a clinical trial. I looked far and wide for any and all potential treatments.
An Immunotherapy Clinical Trial
I chose to enroll in a Phase 3 clinical trial of Bexxar, a radio-immunotherapy. Bexxar was a monoclonal antibody linked with radioactive iodine I-131.
Monoclonal antibodies are built to target and destroy only certain cells in the body. At the time, the drug, which was used to treat certain forms of non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma, was usually given after other medications had been tried without success.
Bexxar put me back in remission. In fact, I was cancer-free for 23 amazing years until I was diagnosed with non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma again literally just weeks ago. I have many friends who were cured by radio-immunotherapy. Nevertheless, the drug was sadly shelved by Glaxo Smith Kline (GSK) for all the wrong reasons.
The drug company didn’t effectively market Bexxar and they clearly didn’t think it was going to be financially advantageous to continue offering this remarkable medicine. I was heartbroken when the drug was scrapped. Because it works. It could have saved many more lives. I have several close friends who are alive because of Bexxar.
GSK scientists have certainly done some very good things. But this decision was wrong on every level. I have written extensively about Bexxar in Newsweek, where I spent 23 years as a national correspondent, the International Business Times, and my Reno Dispatch news blog, among other publications.
I Still Believe in Bexxar
I still firmly believe we should resurrect Bexxar and its sister medication, Zevalin, both of which were Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approved but never given proper support from the companies that owned them. These two drugs showed very good results with minimal side effects. They were both safe and effective medicines that were poorly marketed and underutilized. Perhaps they arrived too soon.
It saved my life and the lives of many others. I will never stop lobbying for it. While Bexxar may never again see the light of day, thankfully many other immunotherapy treatments are now approved by the FDA or will be soon.
After decades of skepticism, immunotherapy is now arguably the hottest thing in the entire vast world of modern cancer medicine.
Most of the world now knows that humans have an immune system because of Covid-19. As we all recall, the cytokine release syndrome (CRS) that happened to some people with Covid was in essence the immune system going off the rails.
It was our immune system that was trying to communicate with us, albeit in manic fashion.
When you push away all the politics, paranoia and hysteria, what you are left with is a remarkable treatment that saved the lives of billions of people worldwide and showed that we do have immune systems. All of us.
People who are now being treated with Keytruda or any other immunotherapy, understand that they are taking an active role in their treatment. They are in fact using their own body’s defenses to fight cancer.
