A Cure for Skin Cancer?

A new drug cuts the risk of death from melanoma by 30 percent, according to a late-stage clinical trial of the Bristol-Myers Squibb medicine, ipilimumab. Melanoma is an aggressive skin cancer, which rapidly spreads to organs, and the survival time after it metastasizes is usually six to nine months. Few treatments exist. In the study of 676 patients, more than 20 percent of those who took ipilimumab were alive after two years, with some alive after four. The dose was a 90-minute infusion every three weeks, for a total of four doses. The drug helps the immune system’s T-cells fight the cancer.