Australian doctor Richard Scolyer has announced that he is completely cancer-free one year after receiving a world-first glioblastoma treatment.
The pathologist's experimental treatment is based on his pioneering research on melanoma. Most patients with Professor Scolyer's subtype of glioblastoma survive for less than a year due to the aggressiveness of the tumor.
The 57-year-old doctor announced that the tumor had not recurred on his latest MRI scan.
Prof Scolyer, an internationally renowned pathologist, was named Australian of the Year this year along with colleague and friend Georgina Long for their life-changing work on melanoma.
The co-directors of the Melanoma Institute Australia said their research over the past 10 years into immunotherapy, which uses the body's immune system to attack cancer cells, has dramatically improved outcomes for advanced melanoma patients worldwide. Half of these patients with less than a 10 percent chance of survival have been cured.
This treatment is the same research that Prof Long used with a team of doctors to treat Prof Scolyer in the hope of finding a cure for his cancer.
Prof Long and his team discovered that immunotherapy works better in melanoma when a combination of drugs is used and these drugs are administered before any surgery to remove a tumor. This made Prof. Scolyer the first brain cancer patient to receive combination immunotherapy before surgery. He is also the first person to receive a vaccine that is personalized to the characteristics of his tumor and improves the ability of drugs to detect cancer.
The results so far have generated great excitement that the duo are on the verge of a discovery that could help the nearly 300,000 people diagnosed with brain cancer worldwide each year.
