10 patients with advanced glioblastoma, the type of brain tumor that killed Joe Biden’s son, Beau were put into a trial of a combination of treatments and it's amazing researchers. Currently it has a survival rate of 7% for 5 years or longer. Two people with advanced brain cancer have responded well to the combo of chemo and immunotherapy drugs. And in one case, the life-threatening tumor “seems to have disappeared.”
Doctors at the Institute of Cancer Research and the Royal Marsden hospital in London are conducting Phase 1 of a trial called Ice-Cap andt say it’s “unusual” to have such a good response in patients this early in a trial. One of those patients Hamish Mykura, 59 was diagnosed with glioblastoma in August 2018. He underwent traditional treatment with minimal effect. In August 2019, he joined the Ice-Cap trial. Twenty months on, Hamish is cancer free.
Patients with glioblastoma don’t have good survival rates, but this could be a turning point. Dr. Juanita Lopez, leader of the study, explains, “We believe that our findings open the door to the further development of what could become a game-changing treatment option for some patients with aggressive glioblastoma brain cancer.”