Dying patients recover in drug trial

Published on Saturday 20 June 2009 19:42

TWO men who were dying from advanced prostate cancer have made dramatic recoveries after taking a groundbreaking drug.

The results of a trial at a leading US clinic have been so successful that details have been released early.

The men had inoperable prostate cancer, one with a tumour the size of a golf ball, which had spread to other parts of the body.

In such cases, patients usually have only months to live. But after just one infusion of the drug Ipilimumab, which stimulates the immune system, given alongside hormone therapy, their tumours shrank enough to be surgically removed. The drug has been shown to prolong survival in patients with skin cancer. It is also being trialled in Hodgkin's disease and lung cancer.

Dr Eugene Kwon, who is leading the treatment at the Mayo Clinic, Minnesota, said yesterday:"Halfway through the trial we began seeing remarkable responses. Some patients had dramatic shrinkage of their tumours, so practically all traces had disappeared."

The patients, Rodger Nelson and Fructuso Solano-Revuelta, were part of a trial involving 108 men, half of whom received the experimental drug. The trial is ongoing, but the two men were pulled out so they could undergo surgery to remove their shrunken tumours.

Surgeon Michael Bute, who operated on Nelson, said: "The pathologist was checking samples as we proceeded and sent word back asking if we had the right patient. He had a hard time finding any cancer. I have never seen anything like this before."

The procedure was repeated with the same result on Solano-Revuelta. A third patient underwent surgery last week. A larger trial is due to being later this year.

Professor Malcolm Mason, at Cancer Research UK, said: "These case reports are extremely interesting and encouraging,

but the drug's true value can only become clear through large-scale, randomised clinical trials.

The other cautionary note is that both men received hormone therapy, which can cause dramatic reductions in tumour size by itself."