When Dave deBronkart was diagnosed with advanced kidney cancer in 2007, he learned about a treatment called high-dose interleukin-2 (IL-2) that fires up the body’s immune system to fight the disease. The response rate was not great — tumours shrank in only about 15% of patients. And as many as 4% of people died from the treatment. But some of those who responded survived for years or even decades.
When researchers gather this week for the annual American Society of Clinical Oncology (ASCO) meeting in Chicago, Illinois, the spotlight will be on immunotherapies — a class of drugs that, like IL-2, kindle the immune system’s ability to fend off cancer (see Nature 508, 24–26; 2014). Attendees will hear the latest about a new generation of these drugs — particularly those targeting a protein called PD-1, which cancers use to fend off immune-system attack. Pharmaceutical companies are racing to bring these PD-1 inhibitors to market.
Other data to be presented at the meeting suggest that IL-2, the drug that saved deBronkart and the first cancer immunotherapy approved by the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA), may be on the verge of a revival after having fallen out of favour.
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