Dean Hochman (CC BY 2.0)

Terminally ill cancer patients could be “effectively cured” by a new combination of drugs that scientists describe as a once-in-a-generation advance in treatment.

The Guardian reports:

A British-led trial brought “spectacular” results with more than half of patients with advanced melanoma seeing tumours shrink or brought under control using the drugs.

Prof Roy Herbst, chief of medical oncology at Yale Cancer Centre in the US, said the treatment, which uses the body’s immune system to attack cancerous cells, could potentially replace chemotherapy as the standard cancer treatment within five years.

“I think we are seeing a paradigm shift in the way oncology is being treated,” he said. “The potential for long-term survival, effective cure, is definitely there.”

In an international trial, 945 patients with advanced melanoma were treated using the drugs ipilimumab and nivolumab. The treatments stopped cancer advancing for nearly a year in 58% of cases, with tumours stable or shrinking for an average of 11.5 months, researchers found.

Read more here.

— Posted by Alexander Reed Kelly.

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