Immunotherapy

Hi SS89 

I don’t have oesophageal cancer but I have been treated with immunotherapy, hence I am replying to your post. Immunotherapy drugs are a class of drugs called checkpoint inhibitors. They target a particular protein on cancer cells and therefore have strict eligibility criteria. If the cancer doesn’t have the relevant protein target there is no possibility of the drug working so it won’t be offered. It might be that immunotherapy is offered to some people with oesophageal cancer (I don’t know as it’s not my cancer) but if so it will be because their cancer has whatever the drug is targeted to address. The most common class of immunotherapy drugs are PD-1 inhibitors such as pembrolizumab and they only work on cancer that express PD-L1. 

 Coddfish thank you, very much appreciated as I did not understand why I couldn’t have it.

 Coddfish sorry to ask again but do you know much about targeted therapy and what the similarities or differences are with targeted and immunotherapy?

https://www.cancerresearchuk.org/about-cancer/treatment/targeted-cancer-drugs-immunotherapy

hope this helps

Hi SS89

I was originally going down the route of chemo /surgery/ chemo even having a planning meeting with surgeon and after laparoscopy no spread. However had to have an ultrasound on my thyroid (am hypothyroid) day after the surgery planning meeting as the Pet scan had shown activity by thyroid and ultrasound found small suspicious nodule . Plan changed to neo adjuvant immuno + chemo.

I’d already queried before if I could have immuno before any surgery as I am dmmr deficient (and HER-) and read it can be very successful for this group but I was told originally it would only be possible according to NICE guidelines if there was mets found or after surgery it returned. Think it’s a funding issue. However after the suspicious nodule was found I was switched to immuno+ chemo as then considered as having a metastasis.

Worth asking more about your own bio markers … good luck