If you look at this year's Nobel price in medicine you may find the answer. As long as the immune system is switched off by the cancer cells the autophagy continues to my understanding. The Nobel prize winner found a mechanism to switch on the immune system again which cured the melanoma with metastasis. The patient was also in Stockholm. "Professor James P. Allison from MD Anderson Cancer Centre, and Professor Tasuku Honjo from Kyoto University were jointly awarded the Nobel Prize for their separate work from the early 1990’s, where they each discovered a different protein that plays a major role in regulating the immune system.

The immune system is a balancing act – it is constantly trying to fight off foreign invaders, like viruses and bacteria, without harming the body – that relies heavily on an intricate system of brakes and accelerators. Sometimes the balance is off, resulting in autoimmune diseases where the immune system attacks the body, or diseases like cancer, where the immune system does not recognise that there is anything amiss.

Both Professor Allison and Professor Honjo discovered molecules that act as a brake in the immune system, halting its action and allowing cancers to grow. In Professor Allison’s research, he showed that blocking the molecule he discovered, CTLA-4, could switch off the brake, allowing the immune system to recognise a tumour and attack it. His work lead to the development of the melanoma fighting drug ipilimumab. Professor Honjo discovered the protein PD-1, and found that blocking it allows the immune system to recognise cancer as an invader and mount an immune response. This led to the manufacture of the immunotherapies nivolumab and pembrolizumab.

Ipilimumab, nivolumab and pembrolizumab are now used extensively to treat metastatic melanoma, working to help patient’s own bodies to recognise and fight the disease. Since these treatments have become available, melanoma patients have a better prognosis than ever before."