Previously, this drug has already been used to treat tumors in the head and neck. The medicine helps support the immune system and increases the attack on cancer cells. The drug has already proven its effectiveness: such therapy has made it possible to achieve improvement in 20 percent of patients.
As part of a new study, scientists tried to establish whether the same drug can be used to prevent cancer recurrence. It should be noted that with a complex method of treatment, which includes chemotherapy and surgery, the risk of oncology returning is 30-50 percent.
The results of the work demonstrated that pembrolizumab is indeed effective. In some participants, the tumors began to disappear even following the first dose. In the group of patients where the drug was given before surgery, the authors 100% recurrence was recorded. And in almost half of the subjects, the drug was able to destroy tumors even before surgery.
