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Breakthrough cancer treatment focuses on immunotherapy

July 31, 2016

CHILLICOTHE - It’s not many times you can say you are ahead of the curve with a medical treatment that has been around since 1725, but that is exactly the case for Adena Hematology/Medical Oncologist Dr. Jeffrey VanDeusen.

VanDeusen has proven himself, not only in Adena’s 12-county service region but across the state of Ohio, as a leader in immunotherapy for the treatment of cancer.

Immunotherapy works by activating the body’s immune system, making it able to recognize cancer cells and destroy them. Recently, Former President Jimmy Carter credited immunotherapy in helping him become cancer-free after his treatment for melanoma.

While the practice of immunotherapy has been around for decades, the field went quiet for many years until 2011. This is when the first checkpoint inhibitor, Yervoy, won approval for the treatment of melanoma. Immune checkpoint inhibitors are drugs, often made of antibodies that unleash an immune system attack on cancer cells. These checkpoint inhibitors work to overtake one of the cancer’s primary defenses against an immune system attack, helping a patient’s natural defense system fight cancer.

“Adena ramped up our immunotherapy efforts very early in the process because the data was pretty strong for it,” VanDeusen said. “By fall 2012, we gave Keytruda the first week of its approval for the treatment of melanoma. The very first week some of these other checkpoint inhibitors were on the market, we started using them for lung cancer treatment as well. We have been right there at the forefront.”

In addition to checkpoint inhibitors, the method of T-cell immunotherapy also has evolved for treating cancer. This is where T cells are isolated from a patient then stimulated or modified to recognize tumors then put back into the patient.

VanDeusen’s use of immunotherapy is becoming a foundation of how Adena is treating its patients with cancer. The Adena Cancer Center is administering more immunotherapy drugs than anyone else in Ohio.

“Immunotherapy has really arrived on the scene for cancer,” VanDeusen said. “We are using it for more and more types. I have used it for lung, melanoma, renal cell carcinoma, breast, head and neck cancers, lymphoma, and leukemia.”

He added, “We actually cured a patient here at Adena a few years ago using checkpoint inhibitors. We had a young man with lymphoma who was doing very poorly.

“He had five other treatments where nothing was working, so we gave him the immune checkpoint inhibitor and cured his lymphoma. He is doing great now.”

While VanDeusen is a firm believer in using the immune system as an agent to fight cancer, he also recognizes there is a lot more work to be done with this complex treatment.

“These are very promising therapies, and we are making a lot of headway,” he said. “We are actually curing some patients with Stage 4 cancers like lung, heart and breast, but it is still only like 20-25 percent of patients who are enjoying this type of response.

“Immunotherapy doesn’t work for everyone. There are times when it can be months before you see a response, and the toxicity for other complications can be high. Results are hard to measure. It’s great to see progress, but there is still so much to learn in order to have more of these successes.”

As immunotherapy receives more national attention, patients are starting to be the first to bring it up in treatment conversations. For Adena, the treatment process is becoming a front line method over chemotherapy to certain cases.

“If you want to know more about immunotherapy for cancer, we are at the forefront of that for the state and this region,” he said. “Most patients do really well with this. Their main complaint is ‘I feel better.’”

Cancer center gets accreditation

The American College of Surgeons Commission on Cancer recently granted the Adena Cancer Center full accreditation status. The commission is a consortium of professional organizations dedicated to improving survival and quality of life for cancer patients through standard setting. This promotes cancer prevention, research, education and monitoring of comprehensive quality care.

http://www.chillicothegazette.com/story/money/2016/07/31/adena-cancer-center-immunotherapy-jeffrey-vandeusen-business/87285454/