Author: Gina Kolata

Multiple myeloma is considered incurable, but a third of patients in a Johnson & Johnson clinical trial have lived without detectable cancer for years after facing certain death.A group of 97 patients had longstanding multiple myeloma, a common blood cancer that doctors consider incurable, and faced a certain, and extremely painful, death within about a year.They had gone through a series of treatments, each of which controlled their disease for a while. But then it came back, as it always does. They reached the stage where they had no more options and were facing hospice.They all got immunotherapy, in a study that was a last-ditch effort.A third responded so well that they got what seems to be an astonishing reprieve. The immunotherapy developed by Legend Biotech, a company founded in China, seems to have made their cancer disappear. And after five years, it still has not returned in those patients — a result never before seen in this disease.These results, in patients whose situation had seemed hopeless, has led some battle-worn American oncologists to dare to say the words “potential cure.”“In my 30 years in oncology, we haven’t talked about curing myeloma,” said Dr. Norman Sharpless, a former director of the National Cancer Institute who is now a professor of cancer policy and innovation at the University of North Carolina School of Medicine. “This is the first time we are really talking seriously about cure in one of the worst malignancies imaginable.”The new study, reported Tuesday at the annual conference of the American Society of Clinical Oncology and published in The Journal of Clinical Oncology, was funded by Johnson & Johnson, which has an exclusive licensing agreement with Legend Biotech.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe.

A study found that women could switch drugs without waiting for scans showing cancer progression, which improved their quality of life.Breast cancer patients whose tumors have spread to other parts of their bodies live from scan to scan. Is their treatment working? Or will they learn their cancer is growing again?But a new study sponsored by the drug company AstraZeneca showed that there is an alternative: Instead of waiting for a scan to show that a cancer is growing, it’s possible to find early signs that the cancer is resisting the drugs that were controlling it.To do that, researchers used a blood test to find mutations in cancer cells that let the tumors defy standard treatments. Early detection allowed patients to be switched to a different drug that overcomes the mutated cancer. The result was to keep the cancers in check longer, and allow patients to have more than an extra year without deteriorating quality of life.The study was reported Sunday at the annual meeting of the American Society of Clinical Oncology and published in The New England Journal of Medicine.Breast cancer specialists who were not associated with the study applauded the results, saying blood tests could transform the way they monitor patients.“This is a paradigm change,” said Dr. Mary Disis, professor of medicine and oncology at the University of Washington and the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Center.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe.