Charles G. Drake, MD, PhD (Damon Runyon-Lilly Clinical Investigator ‘04-‘09) and colleagues at Johns Hopkins Kimmel Cancer Center, Baltimore, reported the success of two Phase I clinical trials to test immunotherapy treatments that block the PD-1 protein and the PD-L1 protein, respectively. The drugs help to restore the immune system’s ability to spot and attack cancer, and have shown promising results in patients with advanced non-small cell lung cancer, melanoma, and kidney cancer. Significant tumor shrinkage followed by stable disease was observed in up to 28 percent of patients. These results were published in the New England Journal of Medicine and presented at the 2012 Annual Meeting of the American Society of Clinical Oncology.
