32 patients received the immunotherapy drug before having surgery (Image: Getty) A blockbuster drug could triple survival chances for some bowel cancer patients by “melting away” their tumours, research suggests. The immunotherapy treatment, pembrolizumab, boosts the immune system’s ability to recognise and attack cancer cells. A study found that 59 percent of patients treated saw their tumours shrink so much that there were no signs of tumours when the affected section of their bowel was removed during surgery.
This could at least triple those patients’ chances of long-term survival, said Dr Kai-Keen Shiu, chief investigator of the trial from UCL Cancer Institute. function loadOvpScript(){let el=document.createElement('script');el.
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