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AnonTechie writes:

Patients with terminal cancer could "effectively be cured" by the discovery of a pair of drugs which can shrink tumours or bring them under control in nearly 60% of people with advanced melanoma.

In an international trial of 945 patients, treatment with the drugs ipilimumab and nivolumab stopped the cancer advancing for nearly a year in 58% of cases. This was compared with 19% of cases for ipilimumab alone, which resulted in tumours stabilising or shrinking for an average of two and a half months.

The treatment, known as immunotherapy, uses the body's immune system to attack cancerous cells. Researchers say it could replace chemotherapy as the standard treatment for cancer within five years.

[Paper]: http://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMoa1504030#t=article