Could common antihistamines be the key to boosting immuno-oncology treatments?

Source: FierceBiotech, November 2021

A team of researchers at the University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center launched a study with a simple question: Could commonly used medicines affect how cancer patients respond to drugs that boost the immune system’s ability to attack cancer? They analyzed the records of MD Anderson patients who were treated with immune checkpoint inhibitors like Merck’s Keytruda and Bristol Myers Squibb’s Opdivo.

The team made a surprising discovery: Patients with melanoma or lung cancer who were taking antihistamines and checkpoint inhibitors at the same time had significantly better outcomes than did patients who did not take the allergy drugs. They reported the discovery in the journal Cancer Cell.

Specifically, it was antihistamines targeting histamine receptor H1 (HRH1) that seemed to correlate with positive responses to checkpoint inhibitors, the MD Anderson team found. That led them to consult the Cancer Genome Atlas and other cancer databanks to see whether they could determine the exact role HRH1 plays in checkpoint inhibition.

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