Melanoma patients who were told to get their affairs in order have been cured of the disease.
A groundbreaking clinical trial involving patients whose cancer had spread to the brain in Wollstonecraft, Sydney, found combining two immunotherapy drugs instead of one offered a higher chance of survival.
Linda Kavanagh was diagnosed with terminal melanoma in 2017 and had 30 tumours throughout her body, including seven in her brain.
“I feel like a walking miracle, I feel like a miracle,” the 71-year-old grandmother said.
“I just felt numb and I kept thinking I won’t see my grandchildren grow up, I’m not going to see my daughters grow up,” Kavanagh said.
Kavanagh was accepted into a groundbreaking trial led by the c, which used a combination of not one but two immunotherapy drugs upfront to fight the cancer.
When used together the drugs marketed as Opdivo and Yervoy supercharge the patient’s own immune system to seek out and destroy cancer cells.
Professor Georgina Long from the Melanoma Institute Australia said of 36 terminal patients given the combination therapy, more than half were alive and well seven years later, when they were only expected to survive 16 weeks.
“What we can say, and we don’t like to use these words lightly, cure for advanced melanoma patients,” Long said.
In just a few months, Kavanagh’s tumours start to shrink and today she’s cancer free.
“We’re not just saying pushing your survival out by a few months or years, we’re saying actually this cancer won’t be your problem,” Long said.
The results of this study could change the way other patients are treated with combination immunotherapy being tested on a range of other cancers including lung, bladder and triple negative breast cancer
People with advanced melanoma that has spread to the brain can access the treatment today for free.
