A breakthrough cancer treatment plan could be a “cure” for a death sentence form of the disease.
An experimental new treatment being pioneered by Dr Paul Mulholland, a brain cancer specialist at University College London, has proved remarkably successful for some patients – and experts say it could be available on the NHS within five years.
Brain cancer affects more than 12,000 Britons a year and relatively few survive, with just one in 10 patients alive a decade after diagnosis.
This is partly to do with the speed brain cancer often spreads but also due to a lack of treatments able to successfully combat it.
But a breakthrough treatment plan uses the drug ipilimumab, which is an immunotherapy drug given intravenously that is already used on the NHS to treat skin cancer, to first shrink the tumor before patients are offered surgery, chemotherapy, or radiotherapy to remove what’s left of the growth. And it could prove a miracle for many sufferers.
London businesswoman Sara Sjölund was diagnosed with brain cancer in 2018, at the age of just 38, and had undergone a range of treatments, reports MailOnline. Radiotherapy, chemotherapy, and surgery all failed to halt her cancer – a type known as an astrocytoma – as the tumour kept growing.
She was offered the chance to trial the new treatment being pioneered by Dr Paul Mulholland – and it has so far proved successful.
After six months Sara’s tumour is all but gone and “inactive” according to Dr Mulholland.
Sara said it’s “like a dead tree, it is still there but at the moment it does not look like it will regrow”.
So far only a handful of patients have been offered it but Dr Mulholland, backed by the National Brain Appeal charity, plans to launch a full-scale trial at the beginning of next year.
Dr Mulholland said: “Sara’s scans show remnants of the tumour. As long as it stays as it is she will be fine.”
Dr Mathew Clement, from the Cancer Research Centre in Wales, said: “It is not out of the question that it could be a cure.”
“We know ipilimumab is effective for other cancers and we have shown that we can apply them to treat brain tumours.
“We could see this treatment offered on the NHS within five years.”
Express.co.uk has approached University College London for comment.