Health experts are pinning their hopes on a very powerful combination of drugs that can unleash the "sleeping" immune system and melt the cancer cells away.
Cancer continues to be one of the most dreaded diseases in the world. Adding to the anxiety is the fact there's no known definite treatment. It always depends on many factors, including the type of cancer a person has, the stage it is in, and the kind of treatment that can work. One of the most serious ones is melanoma, which is an advanced and invasive skin cancer. While skin cancer is treatable and even curable, once it has metastasized, it becomes almost impossible to treat.
However, a 49-year-old patient who already developed dying tissues because of blood flow loss and an overgrown tumor experienced virtually zero melanoma cells after she was provided with a cocktail of Yervoy and Opdivo by Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center doctors. Her case, which was later published in New England Journal of Medicine, concluded by saying she didn't have any detectable melanoma at the end of the study, which was participated by more than 140 people.
When asked to explain the efficacy of the combination in treating cancers, the lead author Jedd Wolchok mentioned that this is only proof of the immune system, which may be prevented to work properly because of the cancer cells, still remains in the body, waiting to be activated.
By stimulating the T cells, a major component of the white blood cells, the combination is able to reduce the size of the tumor by as much as 66%. Although it's unclear how many patients survived their illness past the study, it's believed that they may have lived, on the average, more than 4 months.
Nevertheless, the same study mentioned that around half of the patients who participated experienced very severe side effects, which means more studies have to be performed to ensure these are significantly controlled or even eliminated.
