Can immunotherapy cure dogs and fat shaming?

Boops for the good boy: Dogs can find and recover from cancer using their noses now. (Photo: Pixabay)

Health isn’t all doom and gloom these days, as it turns out. It’s finally Friday, so we’re giving you some good news for a change. Here are three key developments with immunotherapy, a treatment that harnesses the body’s own immune system to fight cancer:

1. Cancer’s game changer
   
   Fourteen patients—and counting—with advanced rectal cancer are now cancer-free after a small trial with an immunotherapy drug called dostarlimab. Experts say it’s too early to call it a cure, but it’s so far managed to make the tumors disappear without surgery, radiation or chemotherapy in all the patients it was tested on. 
   The therapy, done at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center in Washington, D.C. in just six months, was so remarkable they already published a study about it two weeks ago.

2. The obesity paradox
   
   In a recent study, obesity was linked to improved immunotherapy outcomes among patients with certain cancer types. The results showed obese pancreatic cancer patients who received immunotherapy lived longer than those who were normal or overweight.

   It seems counterintuitive to celebrate obesity when it can cause deadly conditions such as heart disease, diabetes, and cancer itself. The “obesity paradox” is a phenomenon that attributes higher BMI with better survival, response to treatment, and better clinical outcomes, even though it causes the disease which requires these treatments in the first place (we’re as confused as you are, we know).

   Dr. Peter Albers, a professor at Heinrich-Heine University Düsseldorf, considered that “patients with higher BMI are able to tolerate the toxicity of the treatments and their side effects better.” In prostate cancer, fat may have hormones that help protect the patient too.

3. A cure for canines, a cure for all
   
   In another study published last week, dogs inhaled immunotherapy to test a treatment for lung cancer. Interleukin-15, the drug used, is a naturally occurring protein in humans which could wake up the immune system to fight cancer cells when re-introduced to the body. The problem is, it’s toxic to humans in large doses. It’s a first to let dogs inhale it directly into the lungs to reduce exposure to the rest of the body. 

   Dogs sniffing out cancer, dogs helping cure cancer—if that isn’t enough to prove that all dogs will go to heaven, some in the trial were successfully treated. Five other dogs’ cancer stabilized for several months. Clinical benefit rate was at 40%, so there’s much work left to be done. 

   “The majority [of dogs in the trial] already had received prior chemotherapy, radiation therapy and, in some cases, immunotherapy. This may help us identify patients that might respond to this therapy, as well as help us understand how to potentially combine other immunotherapies to improve response rates,” said canine oncologist Robert B. Rebhun.

Beyond treating cancer, these findings are valuable for helping patients avoid the life-altering side effects of chemo and radiation (and perhaps, fat shaming?) as more options lean towards immunotherapy. Promoting the dignity of patients is often overlooked, and should be prioritized further going into, arguably, a new era in healthcare after the pandemic.