The photo has been used for illustrative purposes.

A group of doctors in Britain has discovered a treatment that can dissolve tumours, greatly increase the chances of treating bowel cancer, and perhaps replace surgical intervention.

Doctors conducted clinical trials using the drug “Pembrolizumab,” which targets a specific protein and blocks it from immune cells that then search for cancer cells and destroy them.

A clinical trial found that giving the drug before surgery instead of chemotherapy led to a significant increase in the number of patients who were declared cured of cancer, according to The Guardian.

The study was supervised by University College London, University College London Hospital, Christie NHS Foundation Trust, St James's University Hospital, Southampton University Hospital, and the University of Glasgow.

Professor Mark Saunders, consultant clinical oncologist at The Christie Foundation, said: The results of the trial were very impressive, explaining: “Preoperative immunotherapy could become a radical change in the treatment of patients with this type of cancer. Not only is the outcome better, it saves patients from more traditional chemotherapy, which usually has side effects.

“In the future, immunotherapy may replace surgical intervention.”

The researchers studied 32 patients suffering from the second or third stage of bowel cancer, in five hospitals in the United Kingdom, and noted that about 15% of the targeted people had a special genetic makeup.

The patients took pembrolizumab, also known as Keytruda, for 9 weeks before surgery instead of chemotherapy and surgery, and were then monitored over time.

The results showed that 59% of patients showed no signs of cancer after treatment with pembrolizumab, with any cancer in the other 41% of patients being removed during surgery, so all patients participating in the trial became cancer-free after treatment.

The team of doctors revealed that, during the next few years, they aim to evaluate survival rates and relapse rates for patients participating in the trial.

“Our results indicate that pembrolizumab is a safe and highly effective treatment to improve outcomes in patients with high-risk bowel cancers, increasing the chances of remission from the disease at an early stage,” said Dr. Kai-Kin Chiu, lead researcher on the trial and a consultant medical oncologist at the University of California.

Chiu warned that the team will need to wait to see whether patients in the trial will remain cancer-free for a longer period of time, noting that the initial indicators were very positive.