A drug that uses the body’s own immune system to kill cancer cells has produced lasting remissions - some as long as two years - in patients with melanoma that had spread to other parts of the body, according to data published on Monday. Follow-up from an early-stage, 107-patient trial of the drug, Bristol-Myers Squibb’s nivolumab, found that a year after treatment, 62 percent of patients were alive. After two years, 43 percent were alive. Patients with advanced melanoma, the deadliest form of skin cancer, have a median life expectancy of around a year, said Dr. F. Stephen Hodi, director of the Melanoma Treatment Center at Boston’s Dana-Farber Cancer Institute and one of the study’s senior authors.
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