Assessment of Clinical Response Following Atezolizumab and Bevacizumab Treatment in Patients With Neuroendocrine Tumors: A Nonrandomized Clinical Trial

Assessment of Clinical Response Following Atezolizumab and Bevacizumab Treatment in Patients With Neuroendocrine Tumors: A Nonrandomized Clinical Trial

Clinical Trials and Research
BackgroundWell differentiated NETs have been described as an "immunological desert" in recent years mainly due to the poor response rate data coming out of clinical trials of immunotherapy drugs.  Poorly differentiated NEC has favoured better but mainly in the more obscure types.  Which is why these data of a combo treatment containing one immunotherapy drug caught my eye. What is atezolizumab?  It is a type of monoclonal antibody and a type of immune checkpoint inhibitor.  It's a Programmed cell death protein -1 (PD-1)/ Ligand 1 (PD-L1) inhibitor.  A drug that binds to the protein PD-L1 to help immune cells kill cancer cells better and is used to treat many different types of cancer, including cancers that express PD-L1. Atezolizumab is used alone or with other drugs to treat certain types of…
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Immunotherapy: Studies with Neuroendocrine Neoplasms

Immunotherapy: Studies with Neuroendocrine Neoplasms

Clinical Trials and Research, Treatment
IntroductionThere's a lot of Immunotherapy stuff out there! However, I also wanted to break it down and perhaps see if I can pick up the what, when, why, where and how in regard to Neuroendocrine Cancer. It's difficult, not least because the picture is not clear and there is no general roadmap printed, let alone one for Neuroendocrine disease. Immunotherapy for NETs was discussed at ENETS 2017 in Barcelona. The presentation that sticks out was one given by Dr Matthew Kulke, a well-known NET Specialist in Boston. My reaction to the presentation was one of 'expectation management' and caution i.e. it's too soon to know if we will get any success and when we will get it. He also hinted that it's more likely that any success will first be…
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