Immunotherapy, which helps the body’s immune system attack cancer, has revolutionized treatment for cancers such as melanoma and leukemia. However, many other kinds of cancer remain resistant. A new study led by researchers at The Ottawa Hospital and the University of Ottawa suggests that a combination of two immunotherapies (oncolytic viruses and checkpoint inhibitors) could be much more successful in treating breast cancer and possibly other cancers. Their study is published in Science Translational Medicine.
“It was absolutely amazing to see that we could cure cancer in most of our mice, even in models that are normally very resistant to immunotherapy,” said Dr. Marie-Claude Bourgeois-Daigneault, lead author of the study and a postdoctoral fellow in Dr. John Bell’s group at The Ottawa Hospital and the University of Ottawa. “We believe that the same mechanisms are at work in human cancers, but further research is needed to test this kind of therapy in humans.” In the current study, the researchers focused on “triple negative” breast cancer, which is the most aggressive and difficult-to-treat kind of breast cancer.
For more information, please read the full release by the Ottawa Hospital Research Institute.
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