14 DAY TRIAL // Researchers claim to have found a cure for a very aggressive type of skin cancer known to the scientific community as melanoma. What's more, they maintain that, once further investigations are carried out, their treatment could successfully tackle other forms of cancer.
Speaking at the latest meeting of the European Cancer Congress in Amsterdam, the scientists who worked on this project detailed that their treatment for melanoma was basically a combination of two drugs.
These two drugs are ipilimumab, otherwise known as ipi, and anti-PD1s. When used together, they act on the body's immune system and help it fight said aggressive form on skin cancer. As the researchers explain, they “reboot” it.
Besides, they also act on the cancer cells, meaning that they take down their defenses and therefore greatly up a patient's chances to overcome the condition.
International Business Times tells us that, for the time being, 1 in 6 people diagnosed with melanoma can be saved with the help of these two drugs.
Furthermore, Professor Alexander Eggermont is confident that, in about ten years' time, it will be possible to use this combination of drugs to cure 50% of the people diagnosed with melanoma on a yearly basis.
“[Advanced] melanoma could become a curable disease for perhaps more than 50 per cent of patients within five to 10 years,” the professor told the press, as cited by Daily Mail.
“If I’d made this bizarre prediction five years ago, people would have said I was mad. But it now looks like we are going to have control of advanced melanoma for years, in a substantial proportion of patients,” he added.
By the looks of it, it might also be possible to one day use this combination of drugs to treat other forms of cancer. Thus, researchers say that, as ongoing clinical trials show, ipi and anti-PD1s are also surprisingly effective against lung and kidney cancer.
As Alexander Eggermont puts it, “These drugs are going to help a large number of people. It’s a massive deal. Reports from trials with patients who have advanced kidney and lung cancer are very exciting.”