For a bile-duct cancer with few options, a new antibody tripled the response rate

Bile-duct cancer is one of the hardest cancers to treat once it has spread, and when the first round of chemotherapy stops working, options run thin. In a 168-person trial called COMPANION-002, people with advanced bile-duct cancer who had already been through one treatment did clearly better when a new antibody drug, tovecimig, was added to standard chemotherapy. The drug is a laboratory-made antibody that blocks two of the signals tumours use to grow the blood vessels that feed them. Tumours shrank in 18% of patients on the combination, against 5% on chemotherapy alone; the cancer was held back for a median of 4.7 months instead of 2.6; and in 62% the disease was controlled — shrank or stayed stable — against 37%. Responses lasted a median of about five months, and the drug brought no new safety warnings. The results, from a team led by Johns Hopkins researchers, have now passed peer review in the Journal of Clinical Oncology and were presented today at Europe's main cancer congress in Madrid. Whether the drug also helps people live longer is not yet proven — that question is still being studied.

SDG 3 · Good health and well-being — Mechanism: tech innovation