New Cancer Injection Shrinks Tumors in 42% of Patients

Carl Walsh could barely speak or eat because of the swelling and pain from his tongue cancer. After chemotherapy and immunotherapy both failed, the 56-year-old from Birmingham joined a trial that changed everything.

He received amivantamab, a new cancer drug that works differently from anything doctors have tried before. The swelling shrunk, the pain lifted, and the debilitating side effects he endured during chemotherapy disappeared.

An international study by London's Institute of Cancer Research tested the drug on 102 people with advanced head and neck cancer. These patients had already tried every standard treatment available, and their cancer kept growing anyway.

The results stunned researchers. Tumors shrank in 43 patients. In 15 of them, the tumors vanished completely.

Patients who received amivantamab lived for a median of 12.5 months after starting treatment. Tumors began responding in just six weeks, and the cancer stayed under control for more than six and a half months on average.

Professor Kevin Harrington from the Institute of Cancer Research called the responses "unprecedentedly strong." He treats patients at The Royal Marsden NHS Foundation Trust and sees firsthand how limited options become for people whose cancer resists standard treatments.

The drug blocks two signals that help tumors grow and spread. It also activates the immune system to attack cancer cells. Unlike traditional cancer medications that require hospital visits for intravenous drips, amivantamab is a simple injection given every three weeks in an outpatient clinic.

Head and neck cancer affects around 12,800 people in the UK each year and ranks as the sixth most common cancer worldwide. The patients in this trial had cancers not caused by HPV, which are typically harder to treat and respond more poorly to standard therapy.

Why This Inspires

This breakthrough matters because it offers real hope to patients who've heard the devastating words "we've run out of options." The trial focused specifically on people whose cancer had become resistant to every available treatment.

Side effects from amivantamab were mild to moderate. Fewer than 10 patients stopped treatment because of them, a stark contrast to the harsh side effects many chemotherapy patients endure.

Carl Walsh says he can now live a normal life. The drug has already won approval for multiple types of lung cancer, and researchers believe thousands of head and neck cancer patients could benefit each year.

Progress like this doesn't happen by accident. It's the result of rigorous research, international collaboration across 55 hospitals in 11 countries, and patients brave enough to try something new when everything else failed.