
17
Aug 2021
Terminal bowel cancer patients offered new hope thanks to breakthrough drug combination to be offered on the NHS
Clinical trials of the new drug combination found more than 50 per cent of patients given the treatment, who had all failed to respond to standard radiotherapy and chemotherapy treatment, were still alive five years later.
Professor John Bridgewater, consultant oncologist at University College Hospital in London, said many of the patients that took part in the trial were now cancer-free, adding “For the first time, this group of advanced cancer patients has come expectation of being cured.”
The drug combination has been approved for NHS use in bowel cancer patients whose tumours have spread to other parts of the body and haven’t responded to chemotherapy, around 800 people every year.
There has previously been no option for these patients. Their tumours carry a rare genetic mutation known as microsatellite instability high, or MSI-H, causing it to spread at speed and making it impossible to control with chemotherapy.
Professor Bridgewater went on to say “The mutations are so extreme, they stick out like a sore thumb to the immune system.
“In patients suffering from conventional bowel cancer, this treatment would be near useless, as the cancer, while more controllable with chemotherapy, is more effective at hiding from the immune system. But in MSI-H patients, the drugs give the body the necessary boost to find and fight the cancer.
Patients are going from being told they may have just months to live to having over a 50 per cent chance of being alive or totally cured five years on.”
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Posted by Tony May, Partner/head of Clinical Negligence Department, Chadwick Lawrence LLP (tonymay@chadlaw.co.uk ), medical negligence lawyers and clinical negligence solicitors in Huddersfield, Leeds, Wakefield and Halifax, West Yorkshire.
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