Cancer drug combination shrinks 60 per cent of melanoma: study

Skin cancer kills more than 2000 people every year in the UK. But now doctors say they've seen 'spectacular' results after a British-led clinical trial treated people with the most serious form of skin cancer using two drugs in combination.

Source: BBC

The drug combination helps the immune system recognise tumours and then destroy them, and has also been used successfully for other cancers like lung and bowel.

In almost 60 per cent of cases the therapy caused tumours to shrink.

Cancer Research UK told the BBC the drugs deliver a "powerful punch" against the disease.

Dr James Larkin from the Royal Marsden Hospital told the BBC the discovery represents a significant breakthrough in cancer treatment.

"By giving these drugs together you are effectively taking two brakes off the immune system rather than one so the immune system is able to recognise tumours it wasn't previously recognising and react to that and destroy them.

"For immunotherapies, we've never seen tumour shrinkage rates over 50 per cent so that's very significant to see.

"This is a treatment modality that I think is going to have a big future for the treatment of cancer."