Among the acquired environmental factors that clearly cause cancer, the long-term history of asbestos exposure has begun to receive attention, and the onset of malignant pleural mesothelioma is highly correlated with asbestos exposure. Malignant pleural mesothelioma is a rare, highly aggressive, and fatal malignancy that originates in the pleural mesothelium. There are almost no symptoms in the early stages, and by the time most of the symptoms have reached the advanced stages, the main symptoms are chest pain and shortness of breath. The main measure of prevention is to avoid high exposure to asbestos, which should be kept away from the main cause of asbestos.
Because it is easily confused with lung adenocarcinoma, many patients are also misdiagnosed as metastatic lung cancer, and most patients are advanced at the time of diagnosis. The prognosis of malignant pleural mesothelioma is generally poor, with median survival of patients with previously untreated advanced or metastatic malignant pleural mesothelioma between 12 and 14 months and a 5-year survival rate of less than 10%.
Lack of effective treatment is the main reason for the low survival rate in patients with malignant pleural mesothelioma. In the past 15 years, no new systematic treatment regimens have been approved worldwide that are effective in prolonging patient survival. Until June this year, Navuliyuzumab injection combined with ipicumab injection was approved by the State Drug Administration of China for adult patients with non-resectable, initially treated non-epithelial malignant pleural mesothelioma. This is the first and currently approved dual immunotherapy in China, breaking the 15-year deadlock of no new drugs, officially opening the era of dual immunotherapy in China, and providing new treatment options for patients with this disease type. In order to improve the accessibility of medication for patients, the China Cancer Foundation has simultaneously launched a patient assistance project to provide drug assistance to eligible patients and reduce the economic burden of treatment for patients.
As the only phase III clinical study to demonstrate the benefit of improving survival in patients with unresectable malignant pleural mesothelioma, CheckMate-743 provides reliable evidence-based evidence for approval of malignant pleural mesothelioma. Professor Lu Shun, director of the Department of Oncology of the Chest Hospital affiliated to Shanghai Jiao Tong University and the main researcher of CheckMate-743 China, introduced that unlike chemotherapy, tumor immunotherapy fights tumors by activating the body's own immune system. The unique combination of these two immune checkpoint inhibitors, which target two different checkpoints (PD-1 and CTLA-4) to help kill tumor cells, has a potential synergistic mechanism. Combined immunotherapy further reduced the risk of death in patients with malignant pleural mesothelioma by 27% compared with chemotherapy, and nearly 1 in 4 patients survived more than 3 years after receiving dual immunotherapy. This means that once patients benefit from dual immunotherapy, life will continue, which has been demonstrated in multiple tumor species, including non-small cell lung cancer, demonstrating the lasting efficacy of dual immunotherapy for patients.
(Pan Jiayi)