14 DAY TRIAL // In a recent clinical trial, a team of researchers in the US administered a group of volunteers diagnosed with cancer a combination of two drugs, both designed to boost their immune responses and help their body fight the disease.
Of these volunteers, a 49-year-old woman saw the melanoma tumor growing inside her chest vanish without a trace after having been administered the drug cocktail.
As shown in the first of the two images below, the tumor was fairly big. Even so, the drugs obliterated it. In fact, doctors say the treatment worked so well and the tumor disappeared so quickly the patient was left with a hole in her chest.
“The patient received the first treatment of ipilimumab and nivolumab [the drug combo], without substantial adverse effects. When she returned 3 weeks later for the next treatment, she reported that the tumor had 'disappeared.'”
“She was left with a cavity; there was no evidence of a tumor,” specialist Paul Chapman with the Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center and fellow researchers wrote in a report in the New England Journal of Medicine.
It is understood that, when she last saw the doctors who handled her case, the 49-year-old woman was still melanoma-free. For now, specialists don't quite know why she responded so well to the treatment.
The woman's reaction to the drug combo was a fluke
True, the two drugs that the 49-year-old woman was administered, i.e. ipilimumab and nivolumab, also helped other study participants in that they shrunk the melanoma tumors developing inside their body.
Still, researcher Paul Chapman and his team are wary about recommending this drug combination as a bulletproof treatment for melanoma. This is because, of the patients who received the drug cocktail, many experienced side effects.
As detailed in the New England Journal of Medicine, the side effects associated with the use of ipilimumab and nivolumab in combination included swelling of the colon, severe diarrhea and trouble with their endocrine glands.
Not ready to give up on this drug combo as a potential melanoma treatment just yet, specialists plan to carry out further investigations and see whether it might be possible to boost the cocktail's effectiveness while at the same time eliminating its side effects.
