Development of a method for predicting the effects of cancer immunotherapeutic drugs National Cancer Center announced September 1: 4:44
Highly accurate prediction of whether or not cancer patients will receive an immunotherapeutic drug for cancer, such as OPDIVO, which was born from the research by Professor Noriyuki Honjo of Kyoto University, who won the Nobel Prize in Medicine and Physiology The National Center for Cancer Research announced that it has developed a method of doing so.
It is expected to lead to improved treatment and appropriate administration of expensive therapeutic drugs.
In the treatment of cancer, in recent years, by preventing cancer cells from suppressing the function of immune cells, multiple immunotherapy drugs that attack cancer have been developed and used for various types of cancer. I am.
However, because therapeutic drugs are expensive and not effective in some patients, the research group led by Dr. Hiroyoshi Nishikawa of the National Cancer Center Research Institute, We analyzed the genetic information of 90 cancer tissues and the expressed proteins.
As a result, a large amount of a protein called "PD-1" is expressed in cells that attack cancer, and the effect of the drug is often high when the amount of the protein that regulates immunity is low. I understand.
The research group is also developing a method to determine whether a drug is effective by putting a small amount of cancer tissue taken from a patient in a special treatment solution and analyzing it. It is expected to lead to improvement and proper administration of drugs.
Nishikawa said, "The administration may worsen the condition, but we will be able to identify such a person. We want to start clinical trials within 6 months and aim for commercialization."