National Institutes of Health (NIH) findings show that a certain kind of tumor infiltrating lymphocyte (TIL) therapy significantly boosted treatment success for gastrointestinal cancers, according to a release.
The treatment works by finding and choosing TILs from the tumor that “specifically recognize and attack a patient’s tumor cells.” Then, they are multiplied in the laboratory and given back to the patient.
Clinical trial participants had many different types of metastatic gastrointestinal cancers and were previously treated with chemotherapy and high-dose interleukin-2. They “also received the immune checkpoint inhibitor pembrolizumab (Keytruda) to help further boost their immune response.” According to the findings, nearly one quarter of participants that received both the TILs and pembrolizumab “had a substantial reduction in the size of their tumors, compared with 7.7% of patients who received selected TILs without pembrolizumab.” Additionally, “patients treated with TILs that had not been selected for anti-tumor activity had no tumor shrinkage.”
The study is published in Nature Medicine.
