As others pointed out, these are stage I trials and these are patients that have had other treatments already. In particular the melanoma patients had already had other immunotherapy - which is known to work for 50+% of cases - so this could help plugging the gap for the rest.
The testing here is not just that it is safe on skin, but the SPF test itself is done by slathering it on humans and exposing them to light to determine a rating.
Sadly Richard has now had recurrence. There is still hope for this treatment for others, and it likely extended his life, but it isn't happily ever after this time.
No chemo. The entire idea of this regime is to hit the tumour with immuno to get the reaction. They want lots of tumour cells and for it to be "treatment naive" - Richard hadn't even had corticosteroids, which dampens immune.
Once they primed his system they excised as much as possible and kept the immuno going while doing a course of radiation.
Profs Long and Scolyer work with melanoma where chemo is rarely used these days.
fwiw, it’s a really good YT channel. Nice equilibrium between an accessible discourse and going into every important detail. And nice illustrations with what I guess is from flight simulator.
