While results of two international drug trials against advanced skin cancer were hailed as a possible breakthrough, early diagnosis was still the most effective means of treatment, according to two Maltese dermatologists.

The findings were released at the American Society of Clinical Oncology conference in Chicago earlier this week.

The results were hailed as “exciting and striking” and both treatments were intended for cases of advanced skin cancer which in medical terms is known as melanoma.

These drugs in question were hailed for their capability to enable the immune system to recognise and target tumours.

The experimental drugs, pembrolizumab and nivolumab, block the biological pathway cancers use to disguise themselves from the immune system.

The chairman of the dermatology department at Sir Paul Boffa Hospital, Lawrence Scerri, clarified that the drugs were only intended for cases in which the cancer would have spread to the point that the chances of survival were minimal.

He said such kind of medicine was referred to as “targeted biological therapy”, which was found to have good success rates in treating chronic diseases, including arthritis and some kinds of chronic inflammatory bowel diseases.

Dr Scerri said the drugs behaved in a clever way because they disrupted the pathological camouflaging mechanism of the cancer cells that used this method to bypass the body’s immune system.

However, he warned that it was still early days in this research as, unfortunately, cancer cells could be very biologically aggressive and could spread in other ways or resurface in the future.

“While this may have the potential of a breakthrough, at this stage we are still talking about prolonging the life of patients rather than curing them.”

Consultant dermatologist and senior lecturer Michael Boffa noted that the study by leading UK oncology centres reported modest improvement in the survival of patients with metastatic melanoma treated with the tested drugs.

At this stage we are still talking about prolonging the life of patients rather than curing them

He remarked the drugs did not target the malignant cells directly, like most chemotherapy drugs did, but, rather, allowed the body’s own immune system to recognise and attack the cancer cells.

Dr Boffa said such approach was being used in the treatment of other cancers and it was hoped that more effective drugs that worked in this way would emerge in the future.

Although the results for metastatic melanoma were encouraging he stressed that this kind of cancer still had a dreadfully poor prognosis.

“The key to better survival in cases of melanoma remains early diagnosis and prompt surgical removal before the tumour has had time to spread,” he said.

In a trial of 411 patients evaluating pembrolizumab, two thirds of the cases survived at least a year.

The other drug, nivolumab, was tested in combination with an existing licensed immunotherapy, called ipilimumab.

In a trial of 53 patients, the survival rate was 85 per cent after one year and 79 per cent per cent after two years.

Until a few years ago, average survival was about six months.