Irish Examiner view: Gains made in our fight against cancer

Clinical trials of a new drug combination have shown the treatment blocking tumour growth. File Picture: iStock

We saw during the covid-19 pandemic the speed at which medical advances can be made and, in the past week alone, there have been reports of two major breakthroughs in cancer treatment, as well as news of a discovery that could hugely improve the health of women who have endometriosis.

The first of the cancer discoveries concerns women with ovarian cancer, and the revelation that a new drug treatment significantly reduces tumours in 50% of patients. The phase-two trial was led by the Royal Marsden NHS Foundation Trust and the Institute of Cancer Research, London.

Clinical trials of the new drug combination have shown the treatment blocking tumour growth and keeping the disease at bay for years.

Experts have described the discovery as "fantastic" and "very exciting", and say that it could possibly benefit millions of women for whom traditional chemotherapy and hormone treatments have proved ineffective.

As a result of treatment, one woman beat the disease for a second time. Her tumours have been obliterated, and the latest scans show no evidence of the disease.

The second cancer study has shown that taking a pill once a day can cut by 50% the risk of dying from lung cancer.

The decades-long global study revealed that taking the drug Osimertinib after surgery reduced the risk of patients dying by 51%. Lung cancer is the world’s leading cause of cancer death, with 1.8m fatalities annually, so this discovery has obvious benefits.

Doctors have hailed it as "thrilling" and say it has added huge weight to an earlier trial, which showed that the drug halves the risk of the disease recurring.

On top of those breakthroughs, it emerged this week that endometriosis researchers in Australia have discovered new ways of treating the painful and debilitating disease, which affects as many as one in every nine women.

Studies into the disease in Sydney have grown tissue from every known type of endometriosis, observing changes and how each one reacts to different treatments. The development is said to be comparable to those made in the treatment of breast cancer 30 years ago.

These three discoveries are vitally important for a huge number of people and put the gains being made by medical scientists into acute perspective. They are part of ongoing research, but indicate that our battle against pervasive and deadly disease is heading in the right direction.