95% of Late-Stage Skin Cancer Patients Used to Die – Now More Than Half Survive

A decade ago, only 5% of patients with late-stage melanoma – or skin cancer – would stay alive after five years of being diagnosed. Today, the survival rate has risen to 52% – a significant milestone achieved with the help of two life-saving drugs.

The drugs – ipilimumab and nivolumab – were tested in the United Kingdom in a clinical trial involving 945 patients. A third were given one drug, a third the other, and a third were given both. The staggering results showed that when the two drugs were taken together, more than half of the patients stayed alive after five years, and 75% of those who survived no longer needed any form of cancer treatment.

“It’s been an amazing surprise to see so much progress in such a short a period of time,” says James Larkin, a consultant at the Royal Marsden NHS Foundation Trust, to BBC News. “It’s been the most extraordinary transformation from a disease that was regarded, among all the cancers as the most difficult to treat, the most serious prognosis.