Revolutionary melanoma treatment offers new lease on life

It's being hailed as the biggest advancement in melanoma treatment in a decade and it's already saving lives.

Volunteer firefighter Ryan Channells was battling the Black Summer bushfires in December 2019 when he was diagnosed with stage three melanoma.

Doctors told the father-of-two he wouldn't live to see the next Christmas.

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"My kids were my first thought. I'd just had my second child. And I wasn't really going to be there to watch them grow up," Ryan said.

The 43-year-old found out he was eligible for a new clinical trial at the Melanoma Institute.

Typically, patients like Ryan have surgery to remove the tumours first and are then treated with cancer-fighting drugs such as immunotherapy.

But researchers have flipped their approach, using drugs before surgery.

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"When you have that enemy there on board, you actually get a better immune response against the cancer by delaying the surgery for six weeks and then giving drugs," Melanoma Institute Australia's Professor Georgina Long said.

"We think we activate the immune system, that army of immune cells, better against the enemy - the tumour."

The Melanoma Institute collated the data from six different clinical trials. They found that 75 percent of patients responded well to this new method of treatment. For 97 percent of those people, the cancer never returned.

"With this sort of stage three melanoma usually after surgery 60 percent of patients recur," said Professor Long.

Ryan told 9News within a week of treatment his tumour started to shrink. He's now free of cancer.

"It's amazing that I'm now there for my children and I can watch them grow up," said Ryan.

After another clinical trial, this new treatment regime could be available in around two years' time and one day be used against other cancers like lung and bladder.