‘Wonder pill’ can shrink tumours by nearly a third across six major cancers, trial shows

An experimental pill that could boost cancer treatment offers new hope to patients with currently untreatable forms of the disease, an early-stage trial shows.

Cancer diagnosed early can often be treated successfully with standard medications and surgery.

However, as the disease spreads, it becomes much more difficult to fight.

Approximately one in five cases are detected only at an advanced stage, leaving patients with few options beyond palliative care; here, treatment focuses on relieving symptoms rather than providing a cure.

Researchers say the new drug, known as GRWD5769, could change hopes for these patients.

It is designed to be given along with immunotherapy treatments, which help the body’s own immune system seek out and destroy cancer cells.

However, most patients eventually stop responding to these drugs, and resistance occurs in a significant proportion of cases. GRWD5769 is intended to overcome this problem.

In the trial, the pill was given alongside immunotherapy to 83 patients with advanced bowel, bladder, lung, cervical or head and neck cancers; Together these make up around a third of all cases diagnosed in the UK each year.

Results presented at the American Society of Clinical Oncology meeting in Chicago showed that tumors shrank in about a third of patients who took the combination.

More than half of the respondents saw their tumors decrease by at least 30 percent.

The pill was found to be most effective in lung and bowel cancers; halted disease progression for at least six months in more than half of patients; Very few side effects were reported.

It also helped cervical cancer patients, many of whom were diagnosed late, delaying progression by at least six months in 18 percent of cases.

The take-home tablets also stopped disease progression in about a third of liver cancer patients, 36 percent of bladder cancer patients and 38 percent of head and neck cancer patients.

Lead investigators of the trial at the Christie NHS foundation trust in Manchester said that although early data was encouraging for some difficult-to-treat tumours, there was more work to be done before it could be rolled out to clinics.

Combination therapy targets cancer in two different but complementary ways.

Immunotherapy trains T cells (disease-fighting cells) to recognize and attack cancer cells.

However, it fails in approximately two-thirds of patients. This new drug solves this problem by not allowing tumor cells to hide from the immune system.

The study continues, with researchers hoping the drug will continue to improve outcomes for some difficult-to-treat types of cancer.

Dr Cancer Research UK’s research information officer, who was not involved in the research, said: Samuel Godfrey welcomed the findings.

He said: ‘It is unusual to see such results in patients whose cancers have already stopped responding to treatment, particularly some types of cancer that are difficult to treat, so these results are encouraging.

‘But this is still an early-stage study and larger studies will be needed to determine whether this approach can provide lasting benefits to patients.’