Metastatic renal cell carcinoma, malignant melanoma and chronic myelogenous leukemia areresistant to the conventional cytotoxic anticancer chemotherpay. Therefore there have been many therapeutic trials of immunotherapy for these diseases.
Alpha-interferon was widely used and resulted in the response rate of 10to 20%. Gamma-interferon has been expected to have more potent antitumor effect theoretically and better efficacy clinically.
We conducted phase II study of recombinant interferon-gamma(LBD-001, produced by Lucky, Co.) in patients with metastatic renal cell carcinoma or malignant melanoma or Philadelphia-chromosome positive chronic myelogenous leukemia from Feb. 1989 to
Dec.
1991. The schedule was the intramuscular administration of recombinant interferon-gamma 10*10E6 u/m*/day six consecutive days a week for two weeks followed by two weeks of rest and was repeated every four weeks.
In renal cell carcinoma, 4 in 26 patients had partial remission9response rate 15.4%0 and their remission duration was 20, 23, 56, 78+ weeks respectively. Time to progression was 4 to 90+ weeks(median 17 weeks). In malignant melanoma one out of 20
patients had partial remission and its remission duration was 28+ weeks. Time to progression was 2 to 57 weeks(median 6 weeks). In chronic myelogenous leukemia, 2 out of 14 patients(14.2%) had hematological partial remission and their remission
duration
was 6 and 124+ weeks. Cytogenetically, there were 1(7.1%) complete remission, 3(21.4%) partial remission and 3(21.4%) minimal response. As side effects, fever occured frequently but manageable with antipyretics and hepatotoxicity and neutropenia
were
tolerable.
We concluded that recombinant interferon-gamma(LBD-001) had anticancer effect in renal cell carcinoma, malignant melanoma and Philadelphia-chromosome positive chronic myelogenous leukemia.
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