A man, initially diagnosed with an aggressive brain cancer and given only months to live, has witnessed the astonishing disappearance of the cancer, leaving doctors surprised.
Ben Trotman, a 41-year-old man, of West Sussex, was given the glioblastoma diagnosis in October 2022 and he brought his wedding forward to January 2023 as he prepared for the end.
Doctors told him and his now-wife Emily that patients normally only survive nine months.
They were left “grappling with the fact he had gone from being apparently perfectly healthy to having months to live”.
But luckily the investment banker was able to join a world-first clinical trial for a treatment that uses patients’ own immune systems to attack the tumour.
Now, after completing treatment, Ben is virtually disease-free, with the tumour receding in a way that was “previously unheard of”.
Dr Paul Mulholland, of University College Hospital in London, told The Times: “The standard treatment for glioblastoma is to have surgery, radiotherapy and chemotherapy.
“Then your disease comes back, then you have palliative care, then you die. It’s the same story every time. We need to do something different.”