My mom has stage 4 cervical cancer and is trying a new drug
My mom finished a round of chemo a couple months ago and her cancer is still spreading to other parts. Her Dr. said there's a relatively new drug that obviously won't cure her but could prolong her life. Do you have experience with Tidvak? It has some pretty bad side effects, especially regarding the eyes and lungs, but I wanted to see if anyone had any success with it. She's starting next week.
I can certainly tell you what the literature says. Tidvak is the name for the medicine: Tisotumab vedotin, made up of an antibody conjugated to a chemotherapy so that it targets a protein on the tumor (mainly). It received accelerated (preliminary) approval by the FDA in 2021 for a study in 101 women with cervical cancer after chemotherapy. 25% of the women had significant tumor shrinkage: 7% had the cancer become undetectable. On average women received the medicine for 4 months, and those who responded had tumor control for an average of 8.3 months. These results were published in Lancet (a respected British journal) in 2021: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/33845034/. Hope your mom does well, and if needed, there should be some other medicines available on clinical trials too.
Jason Sager, MD
