Skin Cancer: New Drugs 'Can Cure' Disease

Skin cancer sufferers could be cured of the disease with breakthrough drugs, experts claimed, as they hailed the "beginning of a new era".

Seriously ill patients are said to have seen "spectacular effects" after receiving the medication which could eventually be used to combat other forms of the condition.

It is the first time scientists have come this close to providing a remedy for advanced melanoma, which is diagnosed when the disease has spread and can no longer be surgically removed.

Until now the prognosis for advanced melanoma has been very poor and many patients die within months of diagnosis.

Professor Peter Johnson, chief clinician at Cancer Research UK, said: "We're just at the beginning of a new era of cancer treatments using the immune system.

"These drugs that can turn the body's own defences against a tumour are starting to show real promise for melanoma and other types of cancer.

"It's only through research that we can gain the insights needed to develop new treatments for cancer patients."

Test for malignant melanoma

The new cure contains two types of drug - ipilimumab (known as ipi) and anti-PD1s which break down the defences of cancer cells and are still in clinical trials.

Doctors can effectively reboot a patient's immune system by combining the two.

One in six patients are already being saved by the ground-breaking treatment, the European Cancer Congress has been told.

A new combination of drugs could mean more than half are cured of the deadly condition.

Professor Alexander Eggermont, of the Institut Gustave Roussy in France, told The Mail on Sunday: "Advanced melanoma could become a curable disease for perhaps more than 50% of patients within five to 10 years.

"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."

Malignant melanoma is the fifth most common cancer and the 18th most common cause of cancer death in the UK, according to Cancer Research UK. It kills around 2,200 Britons every year.

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