New cancer trials have produced ‘spectacular' results, which could have major consequences for the way the disease is treated, experts have claimed.

One of the trials involved almost 1,000 patients with advanced melanoma, the most dangerous form of skin cancer. They were treated with two immunotherapy drugs, nivolumab and ipilimumab.

Immunotherapy is a type of therapy that helps the body's own defences fight cancer cells. In this trial, when the two drugs were used in combination, progression of the disease was halted for almost one year in nearly 60% of the participants. In these patients, tumours either stopped growing or shrank.

"We're very encouraged that the initial observations about the efficacy of this combination held up in this large phase III trial," said the study's lead author, Dr Jedd Wolchok, of the Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center in New York.

These results, along with the results of a number of different trials involving many types of cancer, were released at the annual conference of the American Society of Clinical Oncology in Chicago.

Commenting on the trials, Prof Roy Herbst of the Yale Cancer Centre in the US said that immunotherapy may eventually replace chemotherapy as the standard cancer treatment.

"I think we are seeing a paradigm shift in the way oncology is being treated. The potential for long-term survival, effective cure, is definitely there," he said.

He also noted that this type of therapy appeared to work best on hard-to-treat cancers.

Also commenting on the trials, Prof Peter Johnson of Cancer Research UK said it appears that ‘we are at the beginning of a whole new era for cancer treatments'.