Role of interventional oncology for immunology treatment

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Published: 8 May 2019
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Prof Thierry De Baere - Institut Gustave Roussy, Paris, France

Prof Thierry De Baere speaks to ecancer at the 2019 International Gastrointestinal, Liver and Uro-Oncology Conference (IGILUC) in Cairo about the role of interventional oncology for immunology treatment.

He discusses what is needed for better delivery of immuno-oncology treatment in cancer patients including applying a local treatment to the tumour and turning 'cold' tumours to 'hot' ones.

Prof De Baere explains that an option being studied is to inject directly inside the tumour which causes the body to make its own fabrication of a vaccine inside the tumour.

 

What we discussed today in this IO for IO session, which is interventional oncology for immuno-oncology, is how interventional oncology can help to have a better delivery of immuno-oncology treatment in cancer patients. There are probably two ways to look at it, the first way is by applying a local treatment to the tumour sites we can turn a tumour which is immuno cold to a tumour which is immuno hot which means that we can increase the number of responders to immuno-oncology treatments. Because, as you know, immuno-oncology is a revolution but this is a revolution for one-third of the patients because only one-third of the patients are responding to the treatment; our goal is to make more patients respond to the treatment.

The other way that we can help for immuno-oncology is that because we are interventional oncologists we can place a needle in every single tumour. We have thus demonstrated that if you inject directly inside the tumour you can use the tumour inside of the body as a remedy. So we can make a factory and the patient will make a fabrication of his own vaccine inside of his own tumour. This is an ongoing study, there are now worldwide many places where we look at this HITIT, which is human intratumoural immunotherapy, and I’m sure there will be a lot of results for many trials worldwide in the next future.