Drug Combo Stops Growth of Melanoma
CHICAGO, June 1 (UPI) — Researchers have found that combining two cancer-fighting drugs can stop melanoma in 58 percent of patients, preventing tumors from growing for nearly a year.
Although the trial proved to be successful, doctors are still unsure about long-term success and the large potential for side effects.
The study involved 945 patients taking the two drugs, designed to activate the body’s immune system and motivate it to attack tumors. The two-drug combo shrank tumors by about a third in 58 percent of patients. Tumors either stayed the same size or continued to shrink for an average of 11 months.
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“For immunotherapies, we’ve never seen tumour shrinkage rates over 50% so that’s very significant to see,” Dr James Larkin, a consultant at the Royal Marsden Hospital in London, said to the BBC.
“This is a treatment modality that I think is going to have a big future for the treatment of cancer.”
The two drugs work together by “taking the brakes off” the immune system to destroy cancer cells, which does not normally happen because cancer cells exploit built-in protections that prevent the body from using the immune system to attack itself.
While the study has been shown to be very promising, researchers still are concerned about side effects, as well as why some patients in the study appeared to show no reaction to the treatment at all.
“Together these drugs could release the brakes on the immune system while blocking cancer’s ability to hide from it, but combining these treatments also increases the likelihood of potentially quite severe side effects,” said Dr Alan Worsley, Cancer Research UK’s senior science information officer. “Identifying which patients are most likely to benefit will be key to bringing our best weapons to bear against the disease.”
The study is published in the New England Journal of Medicine.
