Researchers Discover New Method to Treat Cancer

Research at Oxford University’s Institute of Molecular Medicine has identified a novel therapeutic regimen for the treatment of cancer that provides significant advantages over the existing methods of cancer treatment.

There are already a number of regimens available for treatment of cancer, including chemotherapy, which is commonly used to treat a number of different types of cancer. In most cases chemotherapeutic agents are given at the maximum tolerated dose (MTD), but at such doses the treatments can only be given in short courses and often have unacceptable side effects. In recent years, the use of immunotherapy for tumours has also increased, but tumour cells have been shown to evade immunotherapy by mutating to avoid presentation of the specific tumour epitope to the immune system. It has previously been suggested that a combination of immunotherapy and chemotherapy may prove effective as a treatment. However, this has not proved ideal since conventional chemotherapy suppresses the immune system, thereby reducing the effectiveness of the immunotherapy.

Researchers in Oxford have now devised a novel therapeutic regimen that combines the advantages of both chemotherapy and immunotherapy whilst reducing the disadvantages of each. It has been shown that chemotherapeutic agents can have a beneficial effect at doses lower than the MTD (such a dosing regimen has become known as metronomic dosing). Metronomic dosing, whilst not being as aggressive as the MTD regimen, has fewer side effects and can be used for longer periods without a break. The researchers have identified a metronomic regimen that does not cause the severe immunosuppression of standard chemotherapy and so opens the possibility of combining immunotherapy and chemotherapy. Furthermore, they have shown that such a combination therapy is more effective at inhibiting tumour growth than either chemotherapy (at MTD or as a metronomic dose), or immunotherapy alone or than immunotherapy in combination with chemotherapy at MTD.

Isis Innovation, Oxford University’s technology transfer company, has filed a patent on this exciting Oxford discovery. Companies interested in product developments arising from this work are invited to contact Isis to discuss how they could utilise this technology.

Media Contact

Jennifer Johnson alfa

All latest news from the category: Health and Medicine

This subject area encompasses research and studies in the field of human medicine.

Among the wide-ranging list of topics covered here are anesthesiology, anatomy, surgery, human genetics, hygiene and environmental medicine, internal medicine, neurology, pharmacology, physiology, urology and dental medicine.

Back to home

Comments (0)

Write a comment

Newest articles

Lighting up the future

New multidisciplinary research from the University of St Andrews could lead to more efficient televisions, computer screens and lighting. Researchers at the Organic Semiconductor Centre in the School of Physics and…

Researchers crack sugarcane’s complex genetic code

Sweet success: Scientists created a highly accurate reference genome for one of the most important modern crops and found a rare example of how genes confer disease resistance in plants….

Evolution of the most powerful ocean current on Earth

The Antarctic Circumpolar Current plays an important part in global overturning circulation, the exchange of heat and CO2 between the ocean and atmosphere, and the stability of Antarctica’s ice sheets….

Partners & Sponsors