Bowel cancer “melted away” after immunotherapy, then stayed away
A clinical trial led by UCL researchers found that a short course of immunotherapy before surgery resulted in long-term remission for patients with a specific form of bowel cancer. After 33 months, none of the treated patients experienced a recurrence, outperforming standard surgery and chemotherapy protocols.
Why it matters
This breakthrough suggests that immunotherapy could become a primary, highly effective treatment for bowel cancer, significantly improving patient survival rates.
Patients with a particular form of bowel cancer remained free of recurrence for almost three years after receiving a short course of immunotherapy before surgery, according to new findings from the NEOPRISM-CRC clinical trial led by researchers at UCL and UCLH.
The results, which are due to be presented at the American Association for Cancer Research (AACR) Annual Meeting 2026 in April, extend earlier findings from the trial. Those initial results showed that nine weeks of treatment with the immunotherapy drug pembrolizumab before surgery caused major tumor shrinkage in people with stage two or three bowel cancer.
Earlier data showed that 59% of patients had no detectable signs of disease after pembrolizumab treatment and their planned bowel cancer surgery.
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