A POWERFUL

new ‘poly-pill’ is offering hope to NHS patients with incurable kidney cancer. Recent clinical trials found that patients taking the potent combination therapy lived a year longer than those taking the standard treatment. In the study of almost 2,000 patients given just months to live, a third fewer deaths were seen in the poly-pill group.

The immunotherapy pills, a combination of two drugs, nivolumab plus ipilimumab, were so effective that the drug trial was stopped early.

It was deemed unethical to deny the standard drug group of participants the lifesaving drug.

Health watchdog NICE has now made the dual drug available to NHS patients through the Cancer Drugs Fund.