SNAPSHOT: http://www.clinicaltrials.gov (Recruiting and Not Yet Recruiting)
- Total number of clinical trials, all forms of cancer, Worldwide: 19,314
- Total number of clinicals trials, all forms of cancer, United States: 7,834
- Total number of cancer immunotherapy trials, Worldwide: 1795
- Total number of cancer immunotherapy trials, United States: 926
- Total number of clinical trials, all forms of leukemia, Worldwide: 1525
- Total number of leukemia trials, United states: 805
- Total number of leukemia immunotherapy trials: 66
- Every thing that is done in the world is done by hope. — Martin Luther
Nothing in the medical world, other than COVID-19 research, is advancing more rapidly than the field of cancer immunotherapy, which supercharges the body’s own natural defense system. In less than a decade, oncology has been turned on its head, with new immunotherapy treatments rushing out of the laboratory and into clinical trials every month. And with some 600 thousand Americans dying of this scourge each year, they are desperately needed. But let’s look at what these new therapies can offer, when they work:
THE REMARKABLE CASE OF JIMMY CARTER
In December 2015, former president Jimmy Carter, age 91, was dying of malignant melanoma, the deadliest form of skin cancer, which had spread to his brain and liver. How is he doing today? Amazingly, the 39th president of the United States is free of cancer and alive and well at age 96, injuries aside.
“I fell down a few months ago and broke my left hip,” Carter said in an October 2020 interview by the Voice of America. “I’m learning how to walk again, and so my actual movements are restrained a little bit. But I’m still active mentally and get involved in the Carter Center affairs when I’m needed.” Carter even attended the annual Habitat for Humanity Jimmy and Rosalynn Carter Work Project in Nashville later that month.
“Yesterday, I fell down and hurt my forehead and got a black eye, but I’m doing well,” he said at a press conference during a break in his homebuilding activities. “I feel good enough to build houses.”
THE BREAKTHROUGH OF CHECKPOINT INHIBITORS
What happened? How was this even possible? In December 2015 Carter began receiving the second iteration of a remarkable new class of drugs known as checkpoint inhibitors. For nearly 80 years, since the discovery of antibiotics, doctors have wondered why the human body does not produce antibodies against cancer, as it does for so many other diseases. After billions of dollars and decades of research, scientists finally found the answer: cancer, it seems, tricks the human body into thinking it’s a normal cell.
Checkbook inhibitors arose from “the breakthrough discovery of specific tricks, or checkpoints, that cancer uses like a secret handshake, telling the immune system, don’t attack,” writes Charles Graeber, author of The Breakthrough: Immunotherapy and the Race to Cure Cancer, published in 2018 and available at all major retailers. It’s an important and terribly exciting book that reads more like a racy action novel than nonfiction. “The new drugs inhibited those checkpoints and blocked cancer’s secret handshake,” Graeber writes.
One mustn’t see checkpoint inhibitors as a panacea, however; although the category is growing, only a handful of these immunotherapies exist, and “less than half of all cancer patients have been shown to respond to these drugs,” he writes, But, “Many [respond] profoundly, with remissions measured not in extra weeks or months of life, but in lifetimes.”
A GUSHER OF NEW DRUG DEVELOPMENT
Graeber goes on to report that such breakthroughs have “kicked off a gold rush in research and investment and drug development…there are reportedly 940 ‘new’ cancer immunotherapeutic drugs being tested in the clinic by more than a half million cancer patients in 3,042 clinical trials, with another 1,064 new drugs in the labs in preclinical phase.
“Those numbers are dwarfed by the number of trials testing synergetic effectiveness of immunotherapy combinations. The research is advancing so rapidly that several drug manufacturers have successive generations of drugs stacked up in the clinical trial pipeline like planes waiting for clearance at LaGuardia, requiring new FDA ‘fast track’ and ‘breakthrough’ designations to speed them through the approval process to cancer patients who don’t have time to wait.”
HOW TO FIND IMMUNOTHERAPY TRIALS
Indeed, the urgency to find patients for their immunotherapy trials has led biopharmaceutical companies and major cancer hospitals and research centers to appeal directly to patients in both radio and television commercials. How can you find immunotherapy protocols? When you’re doing research, always be sure to put immunotherapy into the search engine along with the type of cancer. For instance, when searching on http://www.clinicaltrials.gov,, don’t just enter metastatic breast cancer, trials, for instance; be sure to put “immunotherapy” in the “Other terms” box.
A word of caution: although I have repeatedly touted http://www.clinicaltrials.gov as the largest database of trials on this site, be cautioned that it is far from the only source of trials, and, as I’ve said repeatedly, it can be quite difficult to make your way through it, given its blizzard of confusing medical and scientific terminology.
The National Institutes of Health (NIH) has also got you covered here, however! No matter what sort of cancer or illness you need to learn more about, your first online destination should be https://www.nih.gov. I urge you to try it right now! On their home page you’ll see more than a dozen different information resources, most of it written in more user-friendly lingo. I find that the best thing offered is Medline Plus, which offers a primer of information on almost any known disease. In fact, you may well learn more about your disease here than you’ve ever learned from your healthcare providers. Please note, however, that while Medline Plus will tell you a lot of general information about diseases and their treatments, it will not tell you where to find clinical trials, and for that you’ll need to jump back to http://www.clinicaltrials.gov.
The American Cancer Society, at https://www.cancer.org, is also one of the best places to find user-friendly cancer information, and learn about the various treatment options available today, in words you can understand.
BE SURE TO SEARCH THE ENTIRE WEB!
But don’t just stop there. Be sure to the entire Web for clinical trials! You’ll find a massive trove of leads and information. So, go ahead and start your search! What are you waiting for? Hit up Google or Bing or any search engine, and you’ll be amazed at what you find. Since many of the top hits will be posts that are written to attract trial participants, you will find that it reads more in layman’s terms than does http://www.clinicaltrials.gov. You’ll find tons of incredibly helpful and user-friendly information, for instance, from institutions like the American Cancer Association.
THE PROMISE OF MONOCLONAL ANTIBODIES
Don’t give up if you cannot find an immunotherapy trial, however! There are even more clinical trials seeking participants that employ other approaches to cancer treatment. One such approach is collectively referred to as monoclonal antibodies.
“Researchers can design antibodies that specifically target a certain antigen, such as one found on cancer cells,” according to the American Cancer Society. These antibodies are then mass-produced and fed back into the patient’s body to attack the cancer. Part of the beauty of these drugs, when they work as intended, is that they will hunt down the cancer cells they are designed to attack, no matter where they live inside your body, and bind directly to them, rather than healthy cells.
Finding the right antigens, however, can be a tricky business, and monoclonal antibodies work better in some cancers than others, but great progress is being made. Another advance in these drugs, for instance, is that researchers are finding novel ways of attaching other cancer toxins to monoclonal antibodies, making them even more powerful. In just one of many approaches, monoclonals are tipped with radiation, making them even more deadly to the cancer. In this approach, such drugs will often turn up in search results for “radiolabeled antibodies.” But don’t stop there!
IMPROVING YOUR SEARCH RESULTS
Since there are many different types of these new synthetic antibodies, it’s important to broaden your search results to find the most trials. When looking for trials on http://www.clinicaltrials.gov, for instance, a search for “cancer” and “monoclonal antibodies” yields a result of only 1,229 “recruiting” and “not yet recruiting” trials. Searching only for “cancer” and just “antibodies” yields 2,460 trials. Remember always to limit your search parameters to increase your results.
These advances are a huge leap over conventional chemotherapies, which are systemic poisons administered to patients in the hopes that they prove more deadly to cancer cells than healthy ones. This does not mean that immunotherapies or monoclonal antibodies have no side effects, however, because all cancer treatments can have formidable, and even deadly side effects, and discovering these side effects is one of the key reasons researchers must carefully conduct clinical trials over many phases. It’s the reason that Phase I trials begin with only a small number of patients.
NEW HOPE IN “TARGETED THERAPIES” AND COMBINATION APPROACHES
While there is so much promise in immunotherapy and artificial antibodies, let’s look at yet another exciting field in cancer research. Targeted therapies are treatments that use drugs designed to hone in on cancer cells without affecting healthy ones. If it sounds like they are similar to monoclonal antibodies, you are correct, and some, but not all monoclonals are considered to be targeted therapies, but let’s not get lost in complexity.
“Cancer cells typically have changes in their genes that make them different from normal cells,” according to the American Cancer Society. “Knowing these details has led to the development of drugs that can “target” these proteins or enzymes and block the messages being sent. Targeted drugs can block or turn off signals that make cancer cells grow, or can signal the cancer cells to destroy themselves.”
A quick search for “cancer” and “targeted therapy” on http://www.clinicaltrials.gov reveals more than 2,350 such studies either “recruiting” or “not yet recruiting”. Acting on my own advice, however, searching only under “cancer” and “targeted” yields more than 3,220 trials. However and wherever you find them, targeted therapies are an exciting and rapidly evolving science, as researchers learn more about what sets cancer cells apart.
It’s important to note that patients being treated with any of the experimental therapies discussed on this webpage, including immunotherapy, monoclonal antibodies, and targeted therapies, will often receive older cancer treatments over the course of their treatment. These can include surgery, conventional chemotherapy, radiation therapy, hormone therapy, or any combination of these approaches.
FINAL WORD: DON’T GIVE UP YOUR SEARCH!
I’ve discussed three of the sexiest cancer research areas. That doesn’t mean there aren’t other studies you could benefit from. There are currently nearly 20,000 clinical trials that are either recruiting or ramping up in the clinicaltrials.gov database.
Search Modes
AllNewsImagesBooksVideosMoreSettingsTools
Content Navigation Bar
lungbladderfor stomachfor brainfor liverfor rectalfor kidneyfor lymph nodefor tonguefor appendixFeedback
Ads
CAR T-Cell Therapy for Cancer – Refer a PatientAd·www.chop.edu/(267) 426-0762Our breakthroughs in pediatric cancer immunotherapy are game changers. Trust your patient’s care to inventors of pediatric CAR T-cell therapy. Call today. Many Therapies Available. Personalized Therapies. Consult Our Team. More Than 250 Treated.
Why Choose Us
Largest group of pediatric patientstreated with breakthrough therapy.
About Our Program
We offer many optionsfor difficult-to-treat disease.
Search Results
Featured snippet from the web
View allCancer immunotherapy is a therapy used to treat cancer patients that involves or uses components of the immune system. Some cancer immunotherapies consist of antibodies that bind to, and inhibit the function of, proteins expressed by cancer cells. Other cancer immunotherapies include vaccines and T cell infusions.
Cancer immunotherapy – Latest research and news | Naturewww.nature.com › subjectsFeedbackAbout Featured Snippets
People also ask
What types of cancer can be treated with immunotherapy?
How successful is immunotherapy for cancer?
Is immunotherapy better than chemotherapy?
Can Immunology cure cancer?
Web results
Immunotherapy – American Cancer Societywww.cancer.org › treatment › treatment-types › immun…
Immunotherapy is treatment that uses a person’s own immune system to fight cancer. Immunotherapy can boost or change how the immune system works so it …
How Immunotherapy Is Used to Treat Cancerwww.cancer.org › treatment › treatment-types › what-is…
Dec 27, 2019 — How Immunotherapy Is Used to Treat Cancer. Immunotherapy is treatment that uses certain parts of a person’s immune system to fight diseases …
Understanding Immunotherapy | Cancer.Netwww.cancer.net › immunotherapy-and-vaccines › unde…
Immunotherapy is a type of cancer treatment that boosts the body’s natural defenses to fight cancer. It uses substances made by the body or in a laboratory to …
Immunotherapy for Cancer – National Cancer Institutewww.cancer.gov › about-cancer › treatment › types › i…
Sep 24, 2019 — Immunotherapy to Treat Cancer. Immunotherapy is a type of cancer treatment that helps your immune system fight cancer …How does immunotherapy … · What are the types of … · How often do you receive …
What is Immunotherapy – Cancer Research Institute (CRI)www.cancerresearch.org › immunotherapy › what-is-i…
What is immunotherapy? Cancer immunotherapy, also known as immuno-oncology, is a form of cancer treatment that uses the power of the body’s own immune …
People also search for
immunotherapy for lung cancerimmunotherapy side effectswho is a candidate for immunotherapyimmunotherapy trials in indiacancer immunotherapy breakthroughdual immunotherapy
Immunotherapy for All Cancer Types – Cancer Research Institutewww.cancerresearch.org › Immunotherapy
Immunotherapy is a form of cancer treatment that uses the power of the body’s immune system to prevent, control, and eliminate cancer. From the preventive …
Clinical Trials Research Buddy 