The only person in the world to receive a groundbreaking treatment for brain cancer is doing well almost a year and a half later, a charity has said.
Ben Trotman, 41, took part in a clinical trial that used immunotherapy to target his glioblastoma, an invasive growth of cells in the brain that gives an average life expectancy of nine months.
The National Brain Appeal, which funded the treatment, provided a positive update on Trotman’s condition 16 months after his treatment started in November 2022.
The trial, which had to close due to a lack of recruitment, involved giving immunotherapy to glioblastoma patients before the current standard treatment of either surgery, radiotherapy or chemotherapy.
Trotman, who was diagnosed with a glioblastoma in October 2022 before his wedding, had a poor reaction to the treatment from the trial that left him in hospital, before he returned home in December of that year.
Brain scans last summer and more recently showed no evidence of high-grade disease in his tumour, which he was told was “unheard of” at his stage of treatment.
He started standard treatment last January and now continues with monthly chemotherapy.
Trotman, an investment banker for JP Morgan from West Sussex, said: “We obviously don’t know what the future holds but having had the immunotherapy treatment and getting these encouraging scan results has given Emily and I a bit of hope.”
The trial was led by Dr Paul Mulholland, a brain cancer specialist at University College hospital in London.
Mulholland said: “Ben’s reaction to immunotherapy was very unusual. We think this was a rapid immune reaction in the tumour.”
Glioblastoma is the most common type of brain tumour and affects 3,200 people in the UK each year.
The disease killed the former Labour cabinet minister Dame Tessa Jowell, 70, in 2018 as well as the singer Tom Parker, 33, of boyband The Wanted in 2022.
Last week a campaign was announced in parliament to stop the NHS “failing” brain cancer patients.
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Trotman’s wife, Emily, said the treatment was “a lucky break in an otherwise devastating situation”.
She added: “We were grappling with the fact that Ben had gone from being apparently perfectly healthy to having months to live. Had we not met Dr Mulholland, that would have been it for us.”
The National Brain Appeal recently awarded a grant to Mulholland and the UCL Glioblastoma Research Group to fund the work of senior computational biologist Dr Ben Kinnersley.
Mulholland added: “Our aim is to rapidly bring about improved outcomes for patients with glioblastoma.
“We are bringing together the best science, with a multidisciplinary team of clinicians, experimental scientists and bioinformaticians of which Dr Ben Kinnersley, with his unique skill set, plays an essential role.”