Are you or a loved one facing stage IV or recurrent non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC)? Stand Up To Cancer (SU2C) is supporting a clinical trial that may one day benefit not only patients with NSCLC, but potentially those with other cancer types as well.
Lung cancer is recognized by the immune system, yet many cancer treatments that unleash an immune attack on cancer cells, known as immune checkpoint inhibitors, don’t work in up to 80% of patients with NSCLC.
What is nivolumab?
Nivolumab is a type of immunotherapy that stops the tumor from repressing the immune system response. It is an antibody that binds to the body’s T cells in order to keep them turned “on” even while the tumor is trying to turn them “off.” These activated T cells (white blood cells that help your body fight disease) can then attack the cancer cells.
Tumor-infiltrating lymphocytes (TILs) are an immune treatment in which the patient’s own tumor is used to fight the disease. The patient’s tumor is harvested; then immune cells (helper and killer T cells) are isolated from the patient’s tumor, grown and then re-infused back into the patient. This type of treatment has been shown to achieve lasting and durable remissions in some other types of cancer, but has not yet been reported in lung cancer. This clinical trial will combine the TIL cancer treatment with the immune checkpoint inhibitor nivolumab to test whether the combination is safe, and to see if it will ultimately increase the patient’s tumor response rate and duration of remission.