The doctor’s cancer goes into remission after using an innovative treatment he created himself; Understands

Australian doctor Richard Scullier shared on social media on Tuesday (14) that his brain cancer remains in remission, after using a treatment he created with oncologist Georgina Long.

The treatment he used was immunotherapy, which uses the body’s immune system to attack cancer cells. The technique, which has been extensively studied by the Melanoma Institute of Australia, led by him and a colleague, has been used mostly for patients with melanoma, a type of skin cancer. This has led to a radical improvement in the prognosis of those with the disease in the final stage: currently, half of patients are cured, whereas in the past, less than 10% won the battle against the disease.

More about immunotherapy:

In Richard’s case, immunotherapy was used for brain cancer: Glioblastoma. According to oncologist Flavio Silva Brandão, from the Oncoclinicas group, glioblastoma is an aggressive type of cancer that originates in glial cells, those that support the nervous system. It is a rapidly growing disease with a short survival period ranging from one and a half to two years, and the main treatment is surgery followed by radiotherapy and chemotherapy.

The disease is difficult to diagnose in the early stages, and even if it is, the prognosis is usually not good, due to its aggressiveness. It is important to pay attention to the symptoms of the disease.

“Symptoms vary greatly because they depend on where the infection is and how quickly it grows. You [sintomas] The doctor explained that the most common ones are convulsive crises, headaches, weakness in the limbs, changes in vision, speech, behavior, and mental confusion…and this depends largely on the location of the injury.

Innovative treatments

Although the reported case was in Australia, according to the oncologist, immunotherapy has been around in Brazil for a long time and is used in cases of skin, lung, kidney and breast cancer, for example, but for glioblastoma the results were not as interesting. .

“Unfortunately, for glioblastoma, the results of studies related to immunotherapy have not been satisfactory. We have not seen any benefit or benefit from performing immunotherapy. The strategy of performing immunotherapy before surgery may be an interesting strategy, but it is still considered experimental.

Another treatment that is still under study, but has results, is using Car-T Cell. A lymphocyte is taken from the patient’s body and modified to attack a specific protein in the tumor.