News > Immune-Based Therapy May Help Some Battling Advanced Colon Cancers

Immune-Based Therapy May Help Some Battling Advanced Colon Cancers

Immunotherapy helped extend the lives of some patients with the most common type of advanced colon cancer, researchers report. The new findings are important, they noted, because immunotherapy doesn't typically work against microsatellite stable (MSS) colon cancer. These patients have few treatment options once their disease no longer responds to chemotherapy.

"To our knowledge, this is the largest study to evaluate the impact of PD-1/PD-L1 targeting on patient response as stratified by site of metastatic disease," said researcher Dr. Marwan Fakih, co-director of the Gastrointestinal Cancer Program. "Patients without liver metastases could benefit from immunotherapy considerably more than patients with liver metastases," he added.