According to a recent study released by US researchers on Saturday, Bristol-Myers Squibb’s experimental skin cancer drug ‘ipilimumab’ has improved the survival of advanced melanoma patients by an average four months, though the side-effects of the drug can be sometimes severe.

Noting that melanoma is a deadly form of skin cancer, for which doctors have no effective treatment thus far, Dr. Steven O'Day, one of the study’s lead researchers, said that once the drug ipilimumab metastasizes, “the average survival is six to nine months.”

As per the findings of the 676-patient study, released at the American Society of Clinical Oncology’s annual scientific meeting in Chicago, and published online by The New England Journal of Medicine, melanoma patients administered the ipilimumab drug lived an average of 10 months; vis-à-vis the almost six-and-a-half month survival in the comparison group patients given vaccine treatment called gp100.

Terming the study as “a breakthrough for the field of metastatic melanoma that has had a lot of negative Phase 3 trials in the last decade,” O’Day told reporters that the extended four-month survival observed by the study essentially represented a notable 67 percent increase in survival period for melanoma patients.

Furthermore, for some of the patients, the ipilimumab advantage was more lasting – with over 20 percent of the patients who were given the drug still alive for up to two to four years after treatment.