Lung Cancer Treatment Breakthrough Could Increase Survival Rates by 20%

THE Doctor Balmis University Hospital in Alicante has participated in pioneering research worldwide which introduces a new standard of treatment for lung cancer.

This means increasing the survival rate by 20 per cent and will benefit more than 6,000 patients in Spain every year.

The results of the study, Nadim II, from the Spanish Lung Cancer Group (GECP), have been published in the “New England Journal of Medicine” and endorse the great benefit of chemo-immunotherapy with nivolumab before operating on lung tumours in stage 3.

Nivolumab is a type of monoclonal antibody therapy, which works by stimulating the immune system to kill cancer cells.

It consists of a new approach to the tumour in its initial stages that increases life expectancy.

With this new scheme, 36.8 per cent of patients achieve complete reduction of the tumour, that is, almost four out of ten, compared to 6.9 per cent who were treated with chemotherapy alone.

“This Spanish study opens the door to a global change in the treatment of patients with early lung cancer”, reported Informacion.es

In the United States, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) granted rapid approval for this treatment scheme to be available in North American hospitals, and also the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE) has expressed its favourable opinion highlighting its cost-effectiveness and hopes it will also reach Europe this year.

“It is a global change that begins and consolidates with 100 per cent Spanish research”, said Dr. Mariano Provencio, president of the Spanish Lung Cancer Group, principal investigator of the study.

Doctor Bartomeu Massuti, secretary of the group, and head of Oncology at the Doctor Balmis Hospital in Alicante, pointed out that “currently only 30 per cent of these patients survive five years”.

With the Nadim scheme this percentage could reach 70 per cent.

Thousands of patients can benefit from improvements in response to treatment and survival each year in Spain”.

“We are not talking about just one drug. We are talking about a change in the therapeutic approach and strategy that involves many professionals: pathologists, surgeons, oncologists and radiotherapists.

We have found a significant improvement that may put us on the path to curing a significant number of patients after decades without progress”, said Massuti.

The Nadim II data opens the door to increasing the percentage of patients who achieve long-term complete remission of their tumour.

In this sense, the data from the study reports that 36.8 per cent of the patients achieved a complete reduction of the tumour, compared to 6.9 per cent who did so with the traditional approach of applying the treatment after surgery.