A recent study by Margaret von Mehren, MD and Dr. Natthapol Songdej of Fox Chase Cancer Center discusses the role of new treatments for GIST, especially for patients who have progressed on all approved therapies.
Thanks to improved understanding of GIST, personalized therapies are being studied and tested for GIST that are less responsive to the standard kinase inhibitors.
With increasing interest in immunotherapy in cancer treatment, these innovative treatments warrant investigation. Of special interest are the exciting findings observed with CTLA4 and PD-1/PD-L1 antibodies in melanomas and other solid tumors.
Recent have shed light on older agents that may have a role in GIST. Moving forward to test these agents alone or in combination with TKIs offers potentially new strategies for treating advanced disease.Although these investigations are only in the very early stages, it is possible that we may see some relevance to the treatment of GIST, which highlights the ongoing need to fund such important research.
