I tried pembro a couple of years ago and sadly it didn’t work. My onco said that if one doesn’t work, it’s likely that others won’t either. Is that true? Anyone had different results with immunotherapy drugs?
Oh! I'm not sure about that one. My oncologist has suggested that we can try different immunotherapy drugs as need be, but optimising each one as we go. ie use one until it stops working or side effects are too much. Try another. All immunotherapy options aren't the same - some are known to be better on people with specific side effect - that's how we have already chosen our likely next one. There is the immunotherapy treatment that acts on PD-1 (eg pembro and nivo) and CTLA-4 (eg ipilimumab), then the ones that act on VEGF (eg sunitinib, Pazopanib).
Also you can read many people stories and they frequently list different immunotherapy drugs they have tried along the way to try and find something that works. I am thinking specifically of a video I watched on Kidney cancer uk website and a young girl tried drug after drug. Some of them worked for a few months. Perhaps the cancer type is a factor?
Another thing is that sometimes the options are limited due to drug licences according to what has been tested. When I was choosing my first line treatment there was one option had brilliant results, but what was available afterwards was limited.
