New research finds alternative pathway to treat tough cancers including melanoma, pancreatic and brain cancer

Lowering the dose of anti-cancer drugs well below the standard treatment threshold has shown promise in improving tumours’ response to immunotherapy, new research has found. The groundbreaking research out of the Harry Perkins Institute of Medical Research discovered that anti-cancer drugs given at a hundred-fold lower dose could actually stabilise the microenvironment around a tumour, in turn helping immunotherapy to be more effective. The microenvironments around solid tumours consist of sticky support tissue and blood vessels that feed the cancer and make it more difficult to treat. Researchers discovered that when the dose of anti-cancer drugs was significantly reduced, the tumour initially grew before the surrounding blood vessels normalised. It means lower-dose treatment can stabilise tumours enough to allow better penetration of the cancer in immunotherapy. Harry Perkins head of cancer microenvironment Professor Ruth Ganss said the new research showed an alternative pathway to fighting difficult cancers like melanoma, brain cancer or pancreatic cancer. “The anti-cancer drugs we are interested in are already clinically approved, this opens the way for us to propose new dosing and timing protocols for patients,” Prof. Ganss said. “My team and I are excited to have found new ways of modulating cancer blood vessels with already clinically approved drugs, and now we can hopefully produce an outcome which lends itself to better, more effective treatments for the very sick and prolonging their lives.” This research, published in the Journal of Clinical Investigation on Tuesday, paves the way for Prof. Ganss and her team to begin the next stage of research, which will involve analysing tissue samples in patients with difficult-to-treat cancers.