Each announcement of a new treatment, more effective, less invasive, gives rise to hope. Thus lung cancer, considered today as the leading cause of cancer death in France and the third most common, faces numerous therapeutic failures. Thus, 46,363 cases were diagnosed in 2018. Between 2010 and 2023, the incidence of this cancer certainly decreased slightly among men, but increased worryingly among women. And its five-year net survival rate increases a little, but remains poor. On Sunday, new hope in treatments was raised during the World Oncology Congress which is held each year in Chicago, and brings together around 40,000 specialists from everywhere.
Promising studies
Teams of French researchers within the pharmaceutical group AstraZeneca have presented two therapies that could reduce mortality by half in certain patients with lung cancer of two types, via immunotherapy which acts on a patient’s immune system to help him fight his illness. The first drug concerns patients suffering from an aggressive form of lung cancer, the most common since it is smoker’s cancer, and would reduce the risk of death by 27%. The second study, presented on Sunday in Chicago, concerns targeted therapy against cancer in non-smokers, facing lung cancer caused by a genetic mutation.
Thus, the new therapy, concerning so-called “small cell” cancer, that of smokers, would save 10% more patients. Potentially 2,000 patients per year, generally at an advanced stage of the disease, inoperable and without metastasis. During a clinical trial, a cohort of patients therefore underwent, in addition to the chemotherapy-radiotherapy combination, a monthly injection for two years of a new immunotherapy treatment. The researchers, after two years of testing, therefore observed a higher survival rate.
Furthermore, the same team worked with patients affected by another form of lung cancer, called “non-small cell”. It is a genetic cancer in non-smokers. 600 cases are diagnosed each year, with a poor prognosis. This time, another cohort of patients, suffering from a tumor too large to be operated on, tested a targeted therapy tablet, normally prescribed to patients with metastases. These patients also responded well since 65% of them did not relapse in the two years that followed.
Lung cancer: soon organized screening by low-dose scanner?
Lung cancer is one of the most common cancers in France but also the deadliest with 52,777 new cases in 2023 and 33,100 deaths estimated in 2018. While the trend is towards a slight decline in men, the number of cases has exploded among women, + 4.3% per year. Often diagnosed at a late stage, when no curative treatment is yet possible, it is one of the cancers with the poorest prognosis with a survival rate of 17% at 5 years. “The 5-year survival is thus only 4% for detection at stage IV of this cancer, stage at which it is today diagnosed in 40% to 55% of cases”, reported the High Authority of Health in 2022 In this context, early detection would improve patients’ chances of survival by offering them curative treatments.
Hopes which, certainly, are not miraculous, but which, step by step, are eating away at the disease. Another drug was presented in Chicago, concerning another form of lung cancer (ALK), whose effectiveness was highlighted, since 60% of treated patients are still alive, five years after their diagnosis.
