A Portland man has been part of a new study which showed that a new bowel cancer treatment was ‘highly effective’ in diminishing the disease.
Christopher Burston, 73, is a patient at University College London Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust (UCLH), which led the trial along University College London (UCL). He was diagnosed with bowel cancer in February, 2023.
Work has shown that treating patients with immunotherapy before surgery improves survival and cuts the need for chemotherapy and the new study found zero relapses among patients given a new treatment regime, with far better results than would be expected otherwise.
It comes after earlier results had shown that nine weeks of pre-operative immunotherapy using the drug pembrolizumab led to major tumour shrinkage in patients with stage two or three bowel cancer.
Around 59% of patients had no signs of disease after having pembrolizumab and then their planned bowel cancer operation.
Now, 33 months later, none of the patients have seen a return of their cancer – including those who had no signs of cancer after treatment and those who still had small amounts remaining.
Of those with remaining cancer, it did not grow or spread during follow-up.
Mr Burston received three doses of immunotherapy over nine weeks, followed by surgery.
“The outcome of the surgery was essentially that the cancer had melted away – these were the doctor’s words,” he said. "The immunotherapy had had an almost immediate effect.”
And over three years later, Mr Burston remains cancer-free.
“The recovery went fine,” he said. “I didn’t have any problems. And since then, I’ve been feeling pretty much back to normal.
“I feel very lucky that I’ve reached the stage where my main problem is age rather than cancer or any illness.
“I am able to play guitar, tend my garden and walk the dog very much as before and I look forward to spending time with friends and family.”
Normally, around a quarter of people who have standard surgery and post-op chemotherapy see cancer come back after three years, but the new study suggests a short course of immunotherapy before surgery is far more effective.
The trial involved 32 patients recruited with stage two or three bowel cancer and a certain genetic profile (MMR deficient/MSI-high bowel cancer) from five hospitals around the UK.
Around 10-15% of patients with stage two or three bowel cancer have this profile but researchers hope their approach can be extended to others with bowel cancer.
Dr Kai-Keen Shiu, chief investigator from the UCL Cancer Institute and a consultant medical oncologist at UCLH, said: “Seeing that no patients have experienced a cancer recurrence after almost three years of follow-up is extremely encouraging and strengthens our confidence that pembrolizumab is a safe and highly effective treatment to improve outcomes in patients with high-risk bowel cancers.”
