According to research published in the Journal of Chemotherapy, mesothelioma patients receiving immunotherapy showed significantly improved survival compared to the traditional first-line chemotherapy treatment. The study involved a comprehensive analysis of seven clinical trials involving 2,549 patients, and it revealed a 22 percent reduction in death risk among patients with the rare and fatal asbestos-related disease.
Croatian Researchers Identify Promising Trends in Mesothelioma Treatment
The mesothelioma study was a collaboration of researchers from Croatia, who found that the use of immunotherapy significantly improved patient prognosis and overall survival, no matter what cell type. The results revealed particularly striking results for non-epithelioid mesothelioma subtypes, showing much greater benefit compared to the more common epithelioid type. This is a significant departure from previous conclusions about which patients respond best to these state-of-the-art treatments.
Mesothelioma treatment has remained largely unchanged for 20 years, but recent positive clinical trials have led to FDA approval of immunotherapy combinations. The retrospective study noted that the CheckMate-743 trial showed that nivolumab plus ipilimumab extended survival to 18.1 months compared to 14.1 months with chemotherapy, leading to FDA approval as first-line treatment. Additionally, the recent KEYNOTE-483 trial demonstrated that pembrolizumab combined with chemotherapy improved survival to 17.3 months versus 16.1 months with chemotherapy alone, resulting in another FDA approval. These multiple immunotherapy protocols have given patients more options and better outcomes.
Mesothelioma Researchers Report Surprising Findings
The mesothelioma immunotherapy research provided unexpected insights beyond the performance of the innovative drugs. The scientists found that there was no meaningful correlation between objective response rates and overall survival. This challenges the standard reliance on tumor shrinkage as a primary measure of treatment effectiveness in early drug development. It also found a strong correlation between progression-free survival and overall survival, which suggests that future trials could use progression-free survival as a reliable endpoint to speed up drug development and bring new treatments to patients faster.
Immunotherapy’s Impact on Mesothelioma Goes Beyond Mutation Levels
The researchers’ findings revealed that immunotherapy is effective in treating mesothelioma despite the disease’s tumors having low mutational burden, which means that they have fewer genetic mutations than cancers that have previously responded well to the protocol, including melanoma and lung cancer. This suggests that mutation levels alone don’t predict immunotherapy success.
Despite these encouraging results, the scientists noted that selecting the right immunotherapy treatment for each patient remains challenging, as there are few reliable biomarkers for predicting which patients will respond to immunotherapy. PD-L1 testing has delivered results, though some evidence suggests patients with higher PD-L1 expression may benefit more from immunotherapy, especially in patients who have the epithelioid subtypes. Genetic features may help identify patients likely to respond, so future research focusing on gene expression profiling and immune cell signatures could provide personalized treatment approaches tailored to individual patients’ tumor characteristics.
If you or someone you love has been diagnosed with mesothelioma, the Patient Advocates at Mesothelioma.net can help. Contact us today at 1-800-692-8608 to learn more.
