Patients facing the risk of death from bowel cancer may soon gain new hope thanks to a combination of breakthrough drugs. Clinical trials have found that more than half of patients treated with this combination, who had failed to respond to standard chemotherapy and radiotherapy, survived after five years. Professor John Bridgewater, a consultant oncologist at University College Hospital in London, stated that many are now cancer-free thanks to the new treatment, adding, "For the first time, this group of advanced cancer patients is expecting remission."
The drug combination has been approved for use in bowel cancer patients whose tumors have spread to other parts of the body and do not respond to chemotherapy. Previously, there was no option for these patients, as their tumors carried a rare genetic mutation that causes them to spread quickly, making it impossible to control using chemotherapy.
However, in recent years, specialists have grown increasingly hopeful that a combination of drugs is key to fighting the disease. Global trials conducted by the American pharmaceutical company Bristol-Myers Squibb found that the immune drugs nivolumab and ipilimumab yielded very positive results, as both drugs work to train the immune system to seek out and destroy cancer cells.
Patients go to the hospital for treatment and receive both drugs intravenously, with four doses of ipilimumab given once every three weeks, while nivolumab is administered monthly, continuing for two years or as long as the treatment remains effective in controlling the tumor. Results from the Bristol-Myers Squibb trial showed that 65 percent of patients experienced tumor shrinkage after two and a half months of treatment, and in a high percentage of patients, the cancer shrinks to the point where it becomes undetectable on scans. In such cases, doctors say the patient is considered cancer-free, according to the Daily Mail.
