An innovative combination of two immunotherapy drugs were shown to extend the life of patients with metastatic or relapsed head and neck cancer without forcing them to endure extreme chemotherapy.

The drugs nivolumab and ipilimumab didn’t always lead to cures like in Ambrose, but conferred upon late-state head and neck cancer patients on average three more months of side-effect free survival, when compared with traditional chemotherapy, a result that while not statistically significant, is clinically relevant by all measures.

The average survival time was 17 months, the longest ever-achieved in late-stage head and neck cancer patients.

“Our trial shows the immunotherapy combination achieved the longest median overall survival ever seen in patients with relapsed or metastatic head and neck cancer,” said Professor Kevin Harrington, a Consultant Clinical Oncologist at Royal Marsden who helped organized the trial.

“Immunotherapies are kinder, smarter treatments that can bring significant benefits to patients with advanced head and neck cancer—for example, by sparing them some of the difficult side effects of chemotherapy,” said Professor Kristian Hellin, Chief Executive of The Institute of Cancer Research, London?