Taiwan Researchers Report Promising Results On Cancer Drug

A Taiwanese research team said Monday that it has developed a new drug that promises to boost immunotherapy in the treatment of malignant tumors, the Central News Agency (CNA) reported.

Photo Insert: Cancer cells

In animal trials, the drug helped boost immunotherapy efficacy by 30-40 percent in the treatment of tumors, said the research team leader Alan Yueh-leun Lee of the National Institute of Cancer Research (NICR), Chen Chieh-ling and Elizabeth Hsu reported for CNA.

While the drug, called VEGF121-VEGF165, proved effective in animal trials against tissue tumors, it was not tested for use in the treatment of blood cancer, Lee said at a press conference.

Safety tests of the new drug will be carried on animals before moving to clinical trials within the next five years, he said, adding that the human trials will focus on patients with cancer of the breast, colon, neck, and head.

Lee explained that cancer cells tend to have an impenetrable shield, like that of the American superhero figure Captain America, that wards off T cells, a type of white blood cell that protects the body against cancerous cells and other cells that have become infected by pathogens such as bacteria and viruses.

With the VEGF121-VEGF165, the research team has developed a fusion protein drug that can breach the "Captain America" shield and enter the tumor's microenvironment, thus allowing enhanced immunotherapy against the cancer cells, he said. VEGF is an abbreviation for vascular endothelial growth factor, a signaling protein that promotes the growth of new blood vessels.

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