Cancer Patients Celebrate Gift Of Life, Meet For First Time After Clinical Trial At LI Hospital
MINEOLA, N.Y. (CBSNewYork) -- Cancer patients at Winthrop-University Hospital in Mineola celebrated Tuesday after participating in a clinical trial of a new drug that helped them fight their battles against the disease.
Around 70 patients, all diagnosed with different types of metastatic cancer, participated in a trial run of the drug Opdivo -- a treatment which is believed to enable the body's own immune system to fight off cancer, CBS2's Alice Gainer reported.
"We can actually give patients back their full longevity with these drugs or it so appears," said Dr. Jeffery Schneider of Winthrop-University Hospital.
Opdivo is the first drug approved by the Food and Drug Administration for the treatment of lung cancer.
The trial saw some success, with 12 out of the 70 patients reporting positive results in response to the treatment.
"According to the doctors at the beginning they said it wasn't going to be possible that I would live more than 6 months," one patient said. "It's almost 3 years."
Patients received treatment in 40-minute sessions every two weeks.
"My daughter was five and I didn't think that I would see her graduate from high school," one patient said. "And this year, that's what she'll be doing."
The clinical trials continue to try and help the 80 percent of patients who did not improve with immunotherapy. The next generation of tests combines it with chemotherapy, with doctors reporting promising results.