A treatment that rallies the immune system to destroy cancer raised the survival rate for advanced Hodgkin lymphoma patients to a remarkable 92 percent, suggesting a new standard therapy for the disease. The New England Journal of Medicine published the innovative clinical trial results this week. Young people are most at risk to get Hodgkin lymphoma, an uncommon blood and immune system cancer that falls within the general category of lymphomas.
With this new treatment, scientists believe they found a way to reduce long-term side effects of therapy-;including second cancers later in life and heart and lung conditions. "We will see many less breast cancers 20 to 30 years later in this group of patients, less infertility, less heart disease," said Wilmot Cancer Institute Director Jonathan Friedberg, MD, MMSc, at the University of Rochester Medical Center, who led the study. Standard care for Hodgkin lymphoma, which typically involves chemotherapy and often radiation therapy in the youngest patients, already has a cure rate of higher than 80 percent.
"But the 20 percent who are not cured have a long road ahead," Friedberg said. "The goal of this study was to improve the cure rate while also minimizing side effects and long-term toxicities-;and that's what makes this an unprecedented clinical trial." Friedberg is senior investigator and corresponding author for the phase 3 study and chair of the lymphoma committee at the SWOG Cancer Research Network.
A large team at SWOG conducte.