BY DAKOTA TAIT
Researchers at the Hunter Medical Research Institute and University of Newcastle have made a breakthrough in treating late-stage melanoma.
Using a combination of two existing drug treatments, they've managed to significantly improve survival times for patients.
Professor Nikola Bowden says the results are exciting.
"This clinical trial was people with melanoma who are resistant to all our current treatments," she said.
"What we did was take really old chemotherapy drugs and repurpose them to treat the patients and then to put them back on their previous immunotherapy treatment."
"The combination has worked really well."
The team says it was able to re-sensitise cancer cells to immunotherapy, through the combination of Azacitidine and Carboplatin.
It's been investigating their potential since 2015, with 20 people taking part in the trial between 2017 and 2021.
The patients survived an average of 47 weeks, and four of the patients are still alive today.
A second stage of trials is now underway using updated immunotherapy drugs, and initial results suggest it could be even more promising.
"This group of patients have no other treatment options and have a very short prognosis usually," Prof Bowden said.
"It's an option for them, when all the other drugs have stopped working, and there's potential that it will work in other cancers as well."
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| Image credit: Hunter Medical Research Institute. |
