This Drug Could Help Skin Cancer Patients Survive For Decades
Beach Girl Flic Scientists at the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute in Boston have just concluded a ten-year study on the effects of a drug called ipilimumab on patients with advanced melanoma, a form of skin cancer, and have found that the drug is phenomenally capable. In fact, this drug could be the first step to a cure for skin cancer. Here's how the drug works, from Medical Xpress: Ipilimumab is a human monoclonal antibody that activates the immune system to fight melanoma skin cancer by targeting a protein receptor called Cytotoxic T-Lymphocyte Antigen 4 (CTLA-4). In melanoma, CTLA-4 is inhibited from recognising and destroying cancer cells, but ipilimumab turns off the inhibitory mechanism, enabling CTLA-4 to continue killing the cancer cells. The study examined 4,846 patients over a period of more than ten years, measuring the survival rate of those treated with the...