According to NKI researcher John Haanen, it is a “living medicine”. In metastatic skin cancer, tumors are surrounded by cells of their own body, which try in vain to clear up the cancer. The researchers remove these cells from the body and ‘activate’ them again. This creates an army of billions of immune cells, which are returned to the patient’s body. In half of the people in the study, the tumor decreased after this, in about twenty percent the cancer even disappeared.
The study included 168 patients with metastatic skin cancer, most of whom had failed previous treatments. Half of them received the therapy (called TIL), the rest received ‘regular’ immunotherapy. In that control group, the cancer disappeared in 7 percent of the cases.
According to Haanen, smaller studies with TIL treatment had already been done, but this is the first time that the results have been compared with those of a control group. This is a so-called ‘phase 3 study’, which means that the treatment has already been proven to work. The aim of a phase 3 trial is to determine whether the therapy is also more effective than standard treatment for the cancer in question.
Cost much lower
The costs for the TIL treatment are much lower than those for the existing therapies. According to the internist-oncologist, immunotherapy developed by pharmaceutical companies costs about 300,000 to 400,000 euros per patient, the TIL treatment about 65,000 euros.
New chance
For patients with metastatic skin cancer, this “may mean a new chance to get rid of their disease,” says Haanen. He hopes that the treatment will become available to this group as early as next year. Because the research was done on people who had already tried other treatments in most cases, only that group should be eligible for TIL therapy, he thinks. In addition, doctors can only remove tissue from metastases that are in an accessible location in the body. This does not apply to all patients, Haanen admits.
The research was partly funded by the Ministry of Health. The Healthcare Institute will determine next week whether the TIL treatment will be included in the basic package of health insurers. Then all people who qualify can get it reimbursed.