DOCTORS are hailing a breakthrough in cancer treatment after new drugs have been found to clear tumours in cases of advanced lung cancer.
One of the most deadly cancers, lung cancer has a low survival rate since it has often spread to other organs by the time it’s discovered, meaning that within a few months sufferers are usually dead.
But drugs trialed in the US have shown extraordinary results clearing tumours in people in advanced stages of the disease.
According to Mail Online , a quarter of 129 US patients with advanced lung cancer have survived at least two years after being treated with nivolumab.
Nivolumab is one of a new generation of cancer drugs known as anti-PD1s and anti-PDL1s.
In most cases tumours cloak themselves in a way that the body’s immune system is tricked into thinking that they pose no threat.
Mail Online reported that the anti-PD1s and anti-PDL1s work by helping the body’s immune system recognise the tumour as an enemy.
They have also been used to successfully treat skin cancer.
“You would expect patients in that group to survive a few months, if you’re lucky. So to get 24 per cent living two years is extraordinary,” Dr Mick Peake of Glenfield Hospital in Leicester told the paper.
Dr Peake said he saw one man whose lung cancer had spread to his liver, brain, bones and adrenal glands. Yet after a course of treatment with the new drugs there was no more evidence of the disease, he said.
Source: News.com.au