In June 2022, the oncology and palliative care departments of the Royal Jubilee Hospital began a first-of-its-kind treatment for some forms of cancer that has been successful since its implementation.
This new approach to care involves the administration of ‘bispecific T cell engagers’, which are new drugs that show promise for treating a range of cancers, including blood cancers like lymphoma and multiple myeloma, as well as certain melanomas.
Bispecific T cell engagers are an antibody treatment that simultaneously binds to a cancer cell and a T-cell.
The idea is that the T-cell will kill the cancer cell, because the T cell recognizes the cancer as foreign and activates an immune response. The immune system would then kill off all of these cancer cells that have that specific marker on the surface.
When comparing this new approach to traditional chemotherapy, one oncology nurse at the Royal Jubilee, Erica Kroeger, described the latter as a “shotgun approach. ”
This is because chemotherapy kills all rapidly dividing cells, both the good and the bad, whereas bispecific immunotherapy is targeted on the cancerous cells only.
“What it’s doing is harnessing your immune system’s ability to target those bad cells — those cancer cells — and kill them off,” Kroeger said.
According to Island Health, the oncology department at Royal Jubilee Hospital was one of the first hospitals in the province to bring these medications into circulation.
Island Health partnered in this endeavour with BC Cancer in order to provide the treatment with no financial costs for the patients who qualify for bispecific T cell engagers.
“[BC Cancer] partnered with the Royal Jubilee Hospital to do this because it is our main cancer treatment hospital on the Island, and they have an excellent record of supporting cancer therapy,” said Dr. Ashley Freeman, a medical oncologist and malignant hematology lead at BC Cancer, who was instrumental in bringing this treatment method to the Royal Jubilee.
“It was great working with RJH because they recognized the value in this exciting new class of cancer therapy and worked quickly to implement it. As a result, we were the first centre outside of Vancouver to be using these medications in the province. Their support and partnership were the most important thing in getting this up and running.”
Dr. Freeman says that having this type of treatment on Vancouver Island is incredibly important, and shows that collaboration between Health Authorities can save lives.
She hopes to see this approach to cancer treatment continue to evolve and be implemented throughout BC.
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