The Obafemi Awolowo University Teaching Hospital, Ile-Ife, Osun State, on Wednesday, launched the first clinical trial for the treatment of colorectal cancer.
Under the initiative, colorectal cancer patients will receive free treatment from the OAUTH, Lagos University Teaching Hospital and Medserve’s NSIA-Diagnostic Centre, Lagos.
A Professor of Surgery at the Faculty of Clinical Sciences, College of Health Sciences at Obafemi Awolowo University, Olusegun Alatise, while addressing journalists at an event to formally unveil the initiative at the OAUTH complex in Ile-Ife, said the breakthrough in the treatment of colorectal cancer was a result of a collaboration involving experts from different institutions.
Alatise, who noted that experts from OAU worked with their colleagues from Lagos University Teaching Hospital and Medserve, and Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Centre, a global leader in cancer care based in the United States, on the project, further said the experts explored the use of a type of immunotherapy called PD-1 blockade in patients with mismatch-repair-deficient colorectal cancer.
Describing the initiative as the “first clinical trial in sub-Saharan Africa to utilise immunotherapy, a treatment that uses a person’s own immune system to fight cancer,” Alatise further stated that colorectal cancer remains a growing health problem in the country with less than half of the patients living one year after diagnosis.
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