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King (2005) Nature Practice Clinical Oncology

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External beam irradiation with intratumoral interleukin-2: an effective treatment for late-stage nasopharyngeal carcinoma. A recent paper by Jacobs et al. from the Utrecht Medical Centre in The Netherlands provides the first clinical evidence, to the authors’ knowledge, that local interleukin-2 (IL-2) therapy in combination with radiotherapy is an effective treatment for late-stage nasopharyngeal carcinoma (NPC). In this case-control study, ten cases with TNM stage III-IV NPC were treated with 7,000 cGy external beam irradiation over 7 weeks and intratumoral injection of 3 x 104 IU IL-2 on 5 consecutive days, in weeks 2, 4, and 6 of radiotherapy. Each case was compared with two historical controls from hospital records, matched for their TNM status, who had undergone radiotherapy only. All patients were male, with a mean age of 54 years. After 5 years’ follow-up, the censored disease-free survival in the IL-2 group (63%) was significantly greater than the control group (8%) (P = 0.014). In addition, the incidence of tumor recurrence was significantly reduced in the IL-2 treated patients (42%) versus the control patients (92%) (P = 0.03). The authors conclude that radiotherapy combined with intratumoral administration of IL-2 in patients with late-stage NPC is a novel and effective treatment for this aggressive malignancy. They recommend that a randomized, prospective phase III clinical trial be initiated to further investigate these findings. The Utrecht group is studying local IL-2 therapy also in other tumours: see www.cancerimmunotherapy.net Alexandra King Original article Jacobs JJL et al. (2005) Treatment of stage III - IV nasopharyngeal carcinomas by external beam irradiation and local low doses of IL-2. Cancer Immunol Immunother 54: 792–798

Nature Practice Clinical Oncology

King (2005) Nature Clinical Practice Oncology 2 :486 Jacobs et al. (2005) Cancer Immunology Immunotherapy 54 : 792 - 8

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