Reprieve for advanced cancer patients

PROSTATE cancer patients with just weeks or months to live could survive longer after undergoing immunotherapy, a British trial has shown.

About 38 per cent of 258 men with very advanced cancer were still alive after a year on the drug pembrolizumab, and tumours had not grown in 11 per cent.

It is the first time immunotherapy has been shown to benefit some men with prostate cancer, researchers said.

Professor Johann de Bono of the Institute of Cancer Research, London, which led the trial along with the Royal Marsden NHS Foundation Trust, said: “I have these men who are basically dying ... who we gave this drug to and had complete responses.

“Their cancers shrank – disappeared actually – with minimal cancer left on scans.

“These are amazing results, and these are men whose cancers had all the treatments – they had everything possible.”

The drugs stimulate the immune system to recognise and fight the cancer and are used to treat some advanced cancers, including lung and melanoma.

“In the last few years, immunotherapy has changed the way we treat many advanced cancers, but up to now, no one had demonstrated a benefit in men with prostate cancer,” Prof de Bono said.