World first melanoma trial offers hope to new Northern Beaches dad Peter Dixon

New Northern Beaches dad Peter Dixon is hoping a world-first personalised melanoma trial will destroy his tumours and allow him to watch his son grow up.

Peter Dixon has many reasons to beat his stage four melanoma – the biggest being three-month-old son Theo – and a world-first immunotherapy trial will give him a fighting chance.

Only a decade ago, melanoma was a death sentence as chemotherapy was powerless against it. Immunotherapy has already been a “game-changer” but experts believe this trial will unlock a new stage in saving lives.

On Wednesday he began a personalised immunotherapy platform, trialling a new combination of immunotherapy drugs he hopes will allow him to watch Theo grow up.

“It’s a 50-50 chance depending on how my immune system responds to it,” he said. “Theo is the top priority and we are doing everything we can. I want to travel and play with him, go to the beach and teach him to swim.”

Peter Dixon with wife Jenna Walters and their son Theo at Brookvale today. Peter is battling melanoma and will participate in a world-first immunotherapy trial. Picture: Sam Ruttyn

The past year has been an emotional rollercoaster for the 40-year-old after he took his partner Jenna Walters’ advice to get a mole on his back checked out.

It came back as a stage three melanoma that has spread to his lymph node.

Yet the couple refused to stop their lives during his initial round of immunotherapy. “They suggest you not father a child while you are on (it) so a few weeks before we thought give it a go now … and a few months later we found it was all happening, so there was a silver lining to the whole thing and Theo was born December 10,” Mr Dixon said.

“It was amazing and one of those life-changing things. I was in shock really, but I was in awe and wow, our lives had changed for the better and forever.”

\Peter Dixon and his son Theo who was born in December..

The wound where Peter Dixon had his mole that turned into a melanoma cut out,

The immunotherapy had seemed to work and life as a new dad with his cancer at bay was bright – until a scan two weeks ago revealed the melanoma had returned and metastasised, meaning he now has stage four cancer.

“In my mind there was a little seed of doubt and you occasionally think the worst, but the scans (kept) coming back clear. It was a shock to the system to find it had spread,” he said.

Now he has one more chance to beat the cancer.

Oncologist Associate Professor Alex Menzies from the Melanoma Institute Australia said immunotherapy has been a game changer.

“It’s been our penicillin moment, we are seeing amazing outcomes, but sadly not for everyone, it’s a 50-50 response rate,” he said.

Peter Dixon says it is a 50-50 chance on how his body will respond to the immunotherapy. Picture: Sam Ruttyn

“Immunotherapy began about a decade ago and it is now mainstream therapy. It is a huge advance, half of all patients with advanced melanoma we can confidently say we are curing, which you could not do with any metastatic cancer in the past, let alone melanoma.”

Cancer has the ability to turn off the immune system and effectively hide from it. Immunotherapy drugs work by activating the immune system to destroy the tumours.

But matching the right immunotherapy drugs to the particular patient is the aim of the new trial.

“We’ve only really started to scratch the surface, there is a whole lot more targets we can look for an attack and that is what we are trying to do more precisely with this study Peter has joined,” he said. “We made one leap forward and we need to go the rest of the way.”

Melanoma March events are being held throughout this month to raise funds for research.

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Originally published as World first melanoma trial offers hope to new Northern Beaches dad Peter Dixon