![Cancer immunotherapy drug potential ‘game changer’](https://chadlaw.dnsupdate.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2016/03/Injection-needle.jpg)
11
Oct 2016
Cancer immunotherapy drug potential ‘game changer’
The European Cancer Congress has presented promising results in a study of 350 head and neck cancer patients. In the study, the number of patients surviving for longer whilst taking the drug, nivolumab, exceeded those being treated with chemotherapy.
In the trial published in the New England Journal of Medicine, 36% of the patients trialled who were treated with nivolumab were alive after 12 months, as well as experiencing fewer side effects, compared with 17% of patients who were being treated with chemotherapy.
Survival rates amongst advanced head and neck cancer patients are usually very poor.
Another study of 94 patients revealed that combining nivolumab with another drug, ipilimumab, led to a significant reduction in the size of tumours in patients with advanced kidney cancer in 40% of cases. Of these patients, 10 per cent had no sign of cancer remaining.
Kidney cancer affects around 12,000 people each year in the UK and around 12 people die from the disease every day.
So far, nivolumab has only received approval for the treatment of skin cancer and earlier this year it had become, in combination with ipilimumab, one of the fastest drugs ever to be accepted for use within the NHS.
Both drugs work by interrupting chemical signals used by cancers to persuade the immune system that they are healthy tissue.
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Posted by Karen Motley, Paralegal, Clinical Negligence Department, Chadwick Lawrence LLP (karenmotley@chadlaw.co.uk ), medical negligence lawyers and clinical negligence solicitors in Huddersfield, Leeds, Wakefield and Halifax, West Yorkshire.
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