Patients dying of bowel cancer have received hope through a unique drug combination. Clinical studies have shown that in 50% of cases it allows you to extend life by more than 5 years.
Bowel tumors in
the later stages almost always mean a death sentence. Now, however, such patients have received hope, thanks to a combination of drugs that will soon be used in Europe. Clinical studies have shown that more than half of the patients who received this treatment were still alive after 5 years. And before that, all other standards of therapy, including chemotherapy and radiation, did not work for them.
Oncologists from University College London said that many of these patients were completely cured of cancer. For the first time in the history of medicine, such a large group of patients at the late stage of intestinal tumors was registered, which was completely 
cured. The drug combination is approved for use in patients with bowel cancer whose tumor has spread or metastasized to other parts of the body and is not responding to chemotherapy. In the UK, there are approximately 800 such people annually. Previously, there were no options for them other than palliative care.
These tumors carry a rare genetic mutation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mutation that causes them to spread at a very high rate. It cannot be controlled with chemotherapy. Clinical studies conducted around the world, organized by the American pharmaceutical giant Bristol Myers Squibb, have shown that the combination of the immunotherapy drugs nivolumab and ipilimumab gives very positive results. Drugs train the immune system to find and destroy cancer cells.