Clatterbridge trial makes cancer treatment breakthrough to potentially prolong life

Trial of a new drug to treat a form of cancer could “make a big impact on lengthening the survival time for patients”.
Clatterbridge Cancer Centre, Liverpool. Photo: ShutterstockClatterbridge Cancer Centre, Liverpool. Photo: Shutterstock
Clatterbridge Cancer Centre, Liverpool. Photo: Shutterstock

Research at The Clatterbridge Cancer Centre in Liverpool has made a potentially game-changing breakthrough that could prolong the life of patients suffering from a certain form of cancer.

A clinical trial using a new immunotherapy drug, which helps the body to kill tumour cells, has shown that the treatment can improve survival rates.

Hide Ad
Hide Ad

The research centres around an aggressive form of eye cancer that, in about half of patients, spreads to other parts of the body.

Once this happens only around 50% of people survive for more than a year.

Cancer and treatment

Uveal melanoma is the most common eye cancer in UK adults and many people can be successfully treated for it with the help of Clatterbridge’s world-leading proton beam therapy.

However, it can also spread to other areas of the body, usually the liver, as a secondary uveal melanoma.

Hide Ad
Hide Ad

A 378-patient clinical trial has been using the immunotherapy drug tebentafusp to treat patients with uveal melanoma.

Tebentafusp is a bispecific fusion protein, which helps immune response cells get near enough to cancer cells to destroy them.

The clinical trial at Clatterbridge - sponsored by biotechnology company Immunocore -  has shown that the new treatment can improve survival rates in people with secondary uveal melanoma and also can shrink tumours in a small number of patients.

Results of the Clatterbridge clinical trial

Results from the trial show that patients who used tebentafusp on average survived for 21.7 months, compared with 16 months in those given an alternative therapy.

Hide Ad
Hide Ad

Also, 9% of patients taking tebentafusp saw their tumours reduce in size, compared with 5% of people being treated differently.

A statement from Clatterbridge said the side effects of using the drug were shown to be manageable and severity also reduced as treatment went along.

Reaction to the research

The results have recently been published in US scientific publication The New England Journal of Medicine and the paper concludes that tebentafusp should now become the main way to treat this disease.

Dr Joe SaccoDr Joe Sacco
Dr Joe Sacco

Dr Joseph Sacco, from The Clatterbridge Cancer Centre and University of Liverpool, who helped to lead the research, said: “The results of this clinical trial are a first, giving a strong indication that tebentafusp can make a big impact on lengthening the survival time for patients with the metastatic form of this eye cancer, for which there was previously no standard treatment.

Hide Ad
Hide Ad

“These findings validate the potential of using this drug in patients with uveal melanoma and it can make a very real difference to outcomes."

Dr Sacco added: “I’d like to thank everyone at Clatterbridge and other sites around the world for working so hard on this clinical trial. These results make all that work very worthwhile.”

Related topics: