A man who took part in a groundbreaking trial for a new bowel cancer treatment regime has described how his cancer “melted away”. Christopher Burston, 73, was one of 32 patients recruited for a study to find out whether a short course of immunotherapy before surgery could reduce the risk of their disease returning.
Researchers at UCL had expected 25% of patients to relapse within three years. But 33 months later, all remain cancer-free. Christopher was diagnosed with stage three bowel cancer in February 2023 after completing a screening kit.
He said: “The cancer was a very obvious lump high up in my bowel. I was told it was at stage three, and later learned that it could have been growing for years. This came as a real shock. I was, of course, aware that this was a very serious disease and that the outcome could be very nasty.
Christopher was relieved to hear the treatment had been successful (Image: Christopher Burston)
“Over tea and biscuits after the colonoscopy, the nurses did their best to reassure me that treatment was possible and the outcome could be good.”
Christopher, of Portland, Dorset, was offered the chance to join the clinical trial and remembers it “wasn’t a very difficult decision to take”. Doctors — including chief investigator Dr Kai-Keen Shiu, a medical oncologist at UCLH — explained the option of having a short course of immunotherapy before surgery, instead of post-surgical chemotherapy.
Christopher said: “As I understood the trial, the idea was that it could be possible to destroy the cancer using my immune system. This would be activated using a drug tuned to the genetic makeup of the cancer. The effect would be to reduce, or even eliminate, the need for chemotherapy after surgery.”
He had three doses of the immunotherapy drug, pembrolizumab, over six weeks, followed by the surgery. He had been warned that the operation in May 2023 may leave him needing a temporary or permanent stoma, but this was not necessary in the end.
Christopher recalled: “I was told by Dr Shiu a few days later that the operation had shown that the cancer had effectively melted away. This was a wonderful relief and gave me hope that the cancer would not return and that further treatment would not be needed.”
He now has regular blood tests, CT scans and colonoscopies, plus six-monthly check-ins with his doctors. He added: “I have felt little effect from the treatment or surgery.
“I feel very lucky that I’ve reached the stage where my main problem is age rather than cancer or any illness. I am able to play guitar, tend my garden and walk the dog very much as before and I look forward to spending time with friends and family.”
Almost six in ten patients in the trial had no signs of disease after treatment with pembrolizumab and surgery. Even those who had small amounts of cancer remaining have not seen their tumours grow or spread since the operation.
Christopher recovered quickly with few side effects from treatment (Image: Christopher Burston)
Dr Shiu said: “Seeing that no patients have experienced a cancer recurrence after almost three years of follow-up is extremely encouraging and strengthens our confidence that pembrolizumab is a safe and highly effective treatment to improve outcomes in patients with high-risk bowel cancers.
“What is particularly exciting is that we now may be able to predict who will respond to the treatment using personalised blood tests and immune profiling.
“These tools could help us tailor our approach, identifying patients who are doing well and may need less therapy before and after surgery versus patients at higher risk of disease progression or relapse who need additional treatment.”
Bowel cancer is the fourth most common cancer in the UK, with around 44,000 cases diagnosed each year.
Christopher Burston’s bowel cancer melted away after groundbreaking new treatment (Image: ZacharyCulpin/BNPS)
Patients in the NEOPRISM-CRC trial had stage two or three bowel cancer with a certain genetic profile (MMR deficient/MSI-high bowel cancer), which accounts for around 2,000-3,000 cases per year in the UK.
Prembrolizumab works by blocking a protein called PD-1 on the surface of immune cells called T-cells, triggering them to find and destroy cancer cells.
It is already used on the NHS to treat a number of different cancers including cervical cancer, head and neck cancer, and melanoma skin cancer. It is available for certain patients with advanced bowel cancer but not yet approved for the type of patients involved in the trial.
The findings will be presented at the American Association for Cancer Research Annual Meeting 2026 this month.
This story originally appeared on Express.co.uk
