Tumors attacked by immune system respond better to therapy.

2003 FEB 6 - (NewsRx.com & NewsRx.net) -- The presence of tumor-infiltrating lymphocytes predicts the length of remission after chemotherapy and the overall survival of patients with ovarian cancer, according to researchers from the Abramson Cancer Center and the Center on Women's Health at the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine.

Their findings constitute the first proof that a spontaneous immune response against the tumor dramatically impacts the clinical course of ovarian cancer. These novel findings generate hope that immune therapies may significantly prolong the response to chemotherapy and improve the survival of patients with advanced ovarian carcinoma.

Each year, epithelial ovarian cancer - the most frequent cause of death from gynecological cancer - accounts for approximately 14,000 deaths in the United States. Frequently, the disease is not caught until it is already at an advanced stage and, despite the use of surgery and chemotherapy, the overall survival rate after 5 years remains at 25%.

"The patient's immune response to ovarian cancer is one of the strongest predictors of outcome after completion of chemotherapy. Our findings show that the 5-year survival rate of patients whose tumors were infiltrated by lymphocytes was 38%, as compared to 4.5% for patients whose tumors lacked these lymphocytes" said George Coukos, MD, PhD, assistant professor in Penn's department of obstetrics and gynecology and director of gynecologic malignancy research programs. "In fact, only patients with these tumor-infiltrating lymphocytes survived beyond 5 years. Moreover, a subset of patients who had optical surgical resection of their tumor, had complete response to chemotherapy and showed evidence of antitumor immune response, experienced up to 70% survival at 10 years, a remarkable rate of survival for advanced ovarian cancer."

Although these findings are extraordinarily optimistic, Coukos and ...