King Charles comments on ‘encouraging’ cancer treatment news after his own diagnosis

Buckingham Palace announced in February that the king had been diagnosed with an undisclosed form of cancer

King Charles shared a hopeful word about new advances in cancer treatment amid his own cancer diagnosis during his royal tour of Australia and Samoa.

On October 22, the 75-year-old king made the comment during his visit to the Melanoma Institute Australia in Sydney. The outing took place on the fifth day of his historic tour with Queen Camilla, and was one of several stops he made alone.

The Melanoma Institute Australia is the largest melanoma research and treatment center in the world, and the sovereign met with Australian of the Year Award winners Professor Georgina Long and Professor Richard Scolyer to hear more about their work in treating melanoma . Australia has the highest rates of melanoma in the world and it is the third most common cancer in the country.

According to ITV, Long told the King that they are improving the treatment of the side effects of immunotherapy.

Related: King Charles and Queen Camilla arrive in Samoa as Royal Tour continues

“When we stimulate the immune system, it can get confused and start attacking normal tissue. And there are side effects that we have become experts at controlling,” Long said.

“Oh! Do you want it? That’s very encouraging,” the king responded, according to the channel.

Immunotherapy is a cancer treatment that uses the immune system to find and destroy cancer cells, according to the Cleveland Clinic, and differs from chemotherapy, which uses drugs to kill cancer cells and prevent tumor growth.

Long and Scolyer’s work is personal because it helped Scolyer himself. In June 2023, after he was diagnosed with incurable grade 4 brain cancer in 2023, she developed a series of pioneering treatments inspired by melanoma discoveries. Scoyler later became the world’s first brain cancer patient to receive pre-operative combination immunotherapy, “an experimental treatment that hopes to advance the understanding of brain cancer”, said the Australian of the Year Award.

While visiting the Melanoma Institute Australia, the King also met Adam Brown, who is Long’s patient, to hear about his experience treating cancer. The sovereign saw one of Brown’s scans, and Long, who won the Scoyler Australian of the Year award for his efforts to save lives from skin cancer, explained the treatment steps following a melanoma diagnosis.

King Charles asked Brown: “Isn’t the treatment so bad, immunotherapy?” and the patient said he had “minimal side effects”, ITV reported.

Related: King Charles and Queen Camilla embark on Royal Tour of Australia and Samoa: see the best photos!

“Fantastic. Brilliant. I’m so happy,” said King Charles.

In February, Buckingham Palace announced that the king had been diagnosed with an undisclosed form of cancer and had begun treatment. The news came after the palace announced that the king was treated for a benign prostate enlargement in January. A spokesperson clarified that he does not have prostate cancer.

The sovereign postponed public work for three months on medical advice and resumed future commitments on April 30.

Buckingham Palace said in April that the king’s treatment was ongoing, and the sovereign has occasionally spoken about his own health on royal outings since then.

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“It’s always a bit of a shock when they tell you,” he told a cancer patient at University College Hospital London’s Macmillan Cancer Center on April 30, according to Rebecca English Daily Mail. The center is not directly involved in its care, and the king made the statement on his first outing since resuming front office duties.

Before the royal tour of Australia and Samoa, it was reported that King Charles would “pause” his ongoing treatment, thought to be weekly, during the nine-day long-distance trip. He would be traveling with two doctors and will not stop in New Zealand, a nearby Commonwealth kingdom, on medical advice.

Following the King’s moving visit to the Melanoma Institute Australia, he and Queen Camilla departed for Samoa on October 23 to continue the second leg of the trip. The visit to Australia was significant as it marked the first visit to a Commonwealth kingdom since the king’s accession in September 2022.

They continued to Samoa for the Biennial Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting (CHOGM), which will be the first time the King will attend the summit as Head of the Commonwealth. The voluntary association of 56 nations is closely linked to the British crown.

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Read the original article in People.