... The Buffalo, N.Y., gastroenterologist was told he had six months to a year to live and he took a leave from his job to reckon with the grim prognosis. Then his wife, a nurse, tapped her social network and learned about a doctor in Boston who was running clinical trials of experimental drugs that might help.
In June 2012, Eckert went to Massachusetts General Hospital for his first infusion of a drug designed to release a brake the cancer was using to suppress his body’s immune system, and evade attack. Now almost two years later, the cancer has vanished and Eckert, 70, is back skiing, flyfishing, and golfing.
“To me it borders on the miraculous, really, because I’ve had no side effects whatsoever,” he said.
Eckert’s treatment exemplifies a shift in the scientific strategy for fighting some cancers. Driven by fundamental research — much of it done in Boston — an immune therapy approach that was on the fringes of cancer therapy is suddenly the hottest trend in cancer drug development.
Last week, for example, Boston researchers presented data showing that nearly half of patients with advanced melanoma lived for two years after getting an experimental immune therapy called nivolumab, though multiple other therapies hadn’t worked for them. Last month, the Swiss drug company Novartis AG acquired immunotherapy company CoStim Pharmaceuticals in Cambridge for an undisclosed amount. And Agenus Inc. in Lexington recently announced it had acquired 4-Antibody AG, a European firm focused on developing immune-stimulating therapies.
The frenzy of activity is an abrupt change for a field that had made big promises but failed to deliver for years; researchers searching for ways to spark an immune system attack on cancer felt like they were in a small club of believers. ...
https://www.bostonglobe.com/metro/2...mune-system/vDttP3phfRt1J9pCzs0emM/story.html
“Suddenly there’s credibility to this whole field of cancer immunology,” Harvard’s Sharpe said. “That’s been a landscape change.”