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Jun 02, 2015 12:20 PM EDT
Researchers are hailing over a new and revolutionized breakthrough treatment against cancer - the body's immune system. The combination of two drugs has been shown to produce "spectacular" results in patients diagnosed with melanoma.
New research findings on immunotherapy were presented at the annual conference of the American Society of Clinical Oncology in Chicago. Experts were raving about a breakthrough cancer treatment, which utilizes the use of two drugs - ipilimumab and nivolumab.
The combination of two drugs is said to have produced groundbreaking results in nearly 60 percent of cases involving 925 patients with advanced melanoma. Researchers found that this new treatment has stopped cancer from advancing by shrinking the size of tumors or keeping them from growing in less than a year.
Immunotherapy is now viewed as the "potential cure" for the big C. The treatment involves the combination of two drugs, which helps the immune system recognize cancer cells within the body and attack them.
"One of them stops the cancer cells from hiding from the immune system... the other one works by giving our immune system a boost, which means we have more immune cells to target these newly uncovered cancer cells," explained Dr. Aine McCarthy of Cancer Research in UK to CNN.
McCarthy calls the new treatment as "encouraging" and "promising," as it offers hope for patients who were diagnosed with advanced melanoma.
Meanwhile, chief of medical oncology at Yale Cancer Centre Professor Roy Herbst told Sky News that the new cancer treatment could replace chemotherapy in the coming years.
"I think we are seeing a paradigm shift in the way oncology is being treated," said Herbst.
The treatment, however, also poses some serious side effects such as inflammation of the stomach and bowel. Nell Barrie from Cancer Research UK said that more research still has to be conducted on the long-term effects of immunotherapy and whether such effects would outweigh the benefits.
Barrie, however, noted that immunotherapy, if proven effective against melanoma, could also be used in the treatment of other types of cancers such as advanced lung cancer.