The key to treating cancer could be the body's own immune system

(Image credit: Joe Raedle/Getty Images)

published 1 June 2015

A new study in The New England Journal of Medicine, presented this weekend at the American Society of Clinical Oncology's annual conference in Chicago, found that two cancer drugs, when taken together, could shrink tumors in patients with advanced-stage melanoma.

In a trial of 945 worldwide patients, researchers found that combining ipilimumab and nivolumab, two drugs that work with the body's immune system, reduced the melanoma tumors of nearly 60 percent of patients. The combination, which spurred the immune system to fight cancer, also prevented melanoma from advancing for almost a year in more than half of the patients studied.

Over the course of a year, 58 percent of the study participants had their tumors shrink by at least a third while taking the two medicines. But while the researchers agree the results are promising, combining the medications also increased patients' side effects, and 36 percent of patients stopped the treatment because of the side-effects. The scientists behind the study are also still researching the immunotherapy treatment's survival rates.