According to a recent research, a pair of cancer drugs could lead to reduction of tumors in approximately 60% of people with advanced melanoma. It was an international trial conducted on 945 patients. It was found that treatment with ipilimumab and nivolumab stopped development of the cancer for almost a year in 58% of cases. The data has been put forward at the data at the American Society of Clinical Oncology.

According to Cancer Research UK, the drugs work effectively against one of the most serious forms of cancer. In the UK, melanoma is the sixth most common cancer; each year, over 2,000 people in Britain die as a result of this. A quickly developing field in cancer research is harnessing the immune system. The immune system helps fight against infection. But there are many 'brakes' in stopping the system from attacking own tissues of the body. Cancer could be benefited from these brakes and evade attack from the immune system.

Dr. James Larkin, a consultant at the Royal Marsden Hospital and one of the UK's lead investigators, told BBC News, "By giving these drugs together you are effectively taking two brakes off the immune system rather than one so the immune system is able to recognize tumors it wasn't previously recognizing and react to that and destroy them".

Dr. Alan Worsley, Cancer Research UK's senior science information officer, said that this research shows that advanced melanoma could be tackled by combining immunotherapy treatments and these drugs in combination could release the brakes on the immune system.