'Game Changer' Drug Boosts Survival Rate For Relapsed Cancer

An immunotherapy drug has been hailed as a potential game changer after scientists found that it could greatly improve survival for patients with relapsed head and neck cancer, which is difficult to treat. III clinical trial for patients I whom chemotherapy had failed – and it did so with fewer side-effects than existing options. At least twice as many patients taking nivolumab were alive after one year as compared to those treated with chemotherapy. There are currently no other treatment options that improve the survival of patients with cisplatin resistant relapsed or metastatic head and neck cancer. This group of patients is expected to live less than six months. Nivolumab could be a real game changer for patients with advanced head and neck cancer. This trial found that it can greatly extend life among a group of patients who have no existing treatment options, without worsening the quality of life. Of the 361 patients in the trial, 240 with relapsed or metastatic head and neck cancer were allocated to receive nivolumab and 121 one of three different chemotherapies. After one year of the study, 36% of patients treated with nivolumab were still alive compared with 17% for the comparator arm. The median survival for patients on nivolumab was 7.5 months, compared with 5.1 months for chemotherapy. The survival benefit was more pronounced in patients whose tumours had tested positive for human papillomavirus (HPV). Importantly, fewer patients experienced serious side effects from taking nivolumab than with conventional treatment – only 13% compared with 35% of those who received chemotherapy.

Nivolumab became the first treatment to extend survival in a phase