A drug that helps the immune system recognize and attack lung cancer cells may improve survival time among patients with advanced disease. A team from the Cross Cancer Institute in Edmonton, Canada, say preliminary trials on 171 patients showed many were still alive two years later. They hope the drug will one day be used alongside surgery, chemotherapy and radiotherapy. Details were presented at the European Society for Medical Oncology Congress. A larger, phase three trial of the drug is expected to start next year. Researcher Dr Charles Butts said the drug had produced particularly promising results in patients whose cancer was too advanced for surgery, but had not spread to distant organs. Standard chemotherapy blasts away at the tumour, and in doing so damages many normal cells.
