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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
Original Submission
(Score: 5, Insightful) by physicsmajor on Thursday June 04 2015, @09:28PM
Fighting cancer is hard, but Newsweek needs to use their words right. This is not a cure!
It looks a lot more effective than our previous treatments, at least for this one specific nasty type, but all that study says is that it'll stave things off about a year. For probably a cost well into six figures, and you'll live with the terrible chemo side effects the entire time.
Protip for any "science" journalists out there: Look for the word "remission" before screaming "cure" and looking like an idiot.