A man diagnosed with one of the most serious forms of brain cancer has healed after the tumor has completely disappeared due to a revolutionary drug, reports People.
Ben Trotman has completely healed photo: x
In October 2022, Ben Trotman was 40 when he was diagnosed with Glioblastoma, a rare form of terminal cancer that kills over 10,000 Americans each year, according to the National Brain Tumor Society.
Glioblastoma, also known as GBM, does not have a known curative treatment. Standard treatment involves surgery for tumor removal (if possible), followed by radiotherapy and chemotherapy. The disease is considered an extremely invasive tumor of the central nervous system, because its cells reproduce very quickly. People diagnosed with this malignant tumor have an average survival rate of about 14-14.5 months, writes News.
After the diagnosis, Trotman was guided by a friend to the National Hospital for Neurology and Neurology of the University College London Hospitals (UCL). There, Dr. Paul Mulholland, an oncologist, recruited on Trotman to be the first patient in a clinical study.
In the study, Trotman received the IPilimumab immunotherapy medicine to treat glioblastoma, before following any standard treatment. Later, radiotherapy and chemotherapy began.
“The crucial element of this study is that patients will stimulate their immune system with the help of the drug before following other treatments, at a time when they are enough and healthy to tolerate immunotherapy,” Mulholland said in a press release.
Two years and eight months after he was the only participant in the clinical study, Trotman, now 43 years old, no longer has the tumor, and the imaging investigations indicated that it was healthy.
“It is very unusual to have a completely clean scan in the case of a glioblastoma, especially in the conditions in which he has not done the operation of removing the whole tumor, as initially planned“Explained Dr. Mulholland. “We hope that the immunotherapy and subsequent treatments that Ben followed will keep the tumor under control-and so far it was, which we enjoy enormously”, added the doctor.
Mulholland added that its purpose is to find a curative treatment for this “Devastating disease“Which is glioblastoma and hopes to continue studying with several patients.
