China News Service, Guangzhou, March 6th (Cai Minjie and Zuo Jiaolei) Esophageal cancer is one of the most common malignant tumors in the digestive tract.
A team of Chinese experts has recently completed a large prospective Phase III clinical study (JUPITER-06), creating a new regimen for the first-line treatment of advanced esophageal squamous cell carcinoma.
The study showed that the new regimen extended progression-free survival and overall survival in patients with esophageal squamous cell carcinoma.
The above research was led by Professor Xu Ruihua and Chief Physician Wang Feng of Sun Yat-Sen University Cancer Center, and was jointly completed by 72 units including Cancer Hospital of Chinese Academy of Medical Sciences, First Affiliated Hospital of Henan University of Science and Technology, and Cancer Hospital of Harbin Medical University. Cancer Cell, the journal of oncology.
Xu Ruihua said: "The JUPITER-06 study focuses on the high incidence of esophageal squamous cell carcinoma in China, and the application of domestically developed immunotherapy preparations is conducive to solving the treatment demand gap of Chinese patients. We expect that toripalimab combined with TP chemotherapy will help become the new standard for first-line treatment of advanced esophageal squamous cell carcinoma."
Esophageal squamous cell carcinoma and adenocarcinoma are the two main histological subtypes of esophageal cancer, among which esophageal squamous cell carcinoma is the main type of patients in my country, accounting for more than 90%.
"Some people in our country have the habit of drinking strong tea, and also like to eat hot pot and other spicy hot food. This eating habit can easily damage the esophageal mucosal tissue; some people like to eat pickles, the taste is too heavy, and they will consume excessive nitrite. It may be the cause of esophageal cancer.” Xu Ruihua said that poor eating habits will repeatedly stimulate the esophageal mucosa, triggering inflammation of the esophagus, and eventually causing tumors.
For a long time, for esophageal squamous cell carcinoma, platinum-based chemotherapy alone has been used for advanced patients, but the efficacy of chemotherapy alone is not good, the 5-year overall survival rate is still less than 20%, and the prognosis is poor.
In recent years, in addition to traditional regimens such as radiotherapy and chemotherapy, immune checkpoint inhibitors have become a new direction in the treatment of esophageal cancer due to their strong specificity, low side effects, and long tumor control time.
Toripalimab is the first domestically produced monoclonal antibody targeting PD-1 approved for marketing in my country. It was developed by Junshi Bio, a local innovative drug company, for the treatment of various malignant tumors.
A clinical study (JUPITER-06) was launched in 2019 to investigate the efficacy and safety of toripalimab combined with paclitaxel and cisplatin for the first-line treatment of advanced esophageal squamous cell carcinoma.
A total of 514 subjects were enrolled in the study and randomized 1:1 to receive toripalimab plus paclitaxel and cisplatin or placebo plus paclitaxel and cisplatin.
The results of the study showed that compared with the placebo plus chemotherapy group, toripalimab combined with chemotherapy significantly prolonged progression-free survival and reduced the risk of disease progression or death by 42% (HR0.58, P<0.0001), 27.8 % of patients did not experience disease progression or death within 1 year (compared to only 6.1% in the placebo group).
According to Wang Feng, "We observed a significant 'tailing effect' in the toripalimab group, indicating that the benefited patients can continue to obtain stable and long-term effects from immunotherapy, which makes esophageal cancer a chronic disease. 'It becomes possible." (End)