Hong Kong professor takes lead on cancer immunotherapy trial

Researchers from Hong Kong are at the forefront of the global battle against cancer as they test pioneering drugs that use the body’s own immune system to destroy deadly tumours.

Immunotherapy, which has fewer side-effects than traditional treatments like chemotherapy, caught the attention of the medical world at the weekend as a series of “promising” trial results were revealed at the conference of the American Society of Clinical Oncology (Asco) in Chicago.

A study of a drug called Pembrolizumab, led by a Hong Kong academic, is one of five immunotherapy trials around the world aimed at lung cancer, the most common and deadly form of the disease both in the city and internationally.

Led by Professor Tony Mok Shu-kam, a clinical oncologist at Chinese University and lung cancer expert, the study will involve 1,200 patients from Hong Kong and more than 20 countries including mainland China and Brazil. The work is at a preliminary stage, but Mok said: “The drug has shown promising results in treating lung cancer patients as a first-line treatment.”

Mok introduced the study design yesterday at Asco, one of the world’s largest medical events, which is attended by more than 30,000 oncologists and international experts and ends today.

Pembrolizumab has proved effective during trials in only about 20 per cent of patients with non-small-cell lung cancer, a common form of the disease. But Mok, citing other studies, believed those who benefitted showed good, lasting results.

“It has given these patients a new hope as they have no alternative treatment,” he said.