David Braund went to his GP in April with a small pimple-like mark on his forehead and a swollen lymph node.
He was quickly diagnosed with stage four metastasised malignant melanoma.
The skin cancer on his head had spread to his lymph nodes and liver.
He was told without treatment he likely had less than 12 months to live.
But he said the tide might be turning since he and another Perth patient became the first in Australia to participate in a ground-breaking study.
Lesion 'pretty much disappeared'
Mr Braund told ABC Radio Perth's Nadia Mitsopoulos he felt surprisingly well despite only completing the main part of the treatment a day prior.
"The chemo was pretty heavy going, which I knew that was going to be. But leading into it I felt fine. I had no issues," he said.
"I was still working, doing what I needed to. Then I had the treatment and was discharged yesterday. I'm now out and about doing things and shopping."
Loading...He said he had already noticed positive changes and was feeling quietly optimistic.
"The lesion on my head, which was the size of a five-cent piece, has pretty much disappeared," he said.
"I'm over the moon with that. And then hopefully with the ongoing treatment, it should be all good."
Personalised immunotherapy
The trial is headed up by Professor Adnan Khattak, a medical oncologist at Fiona Stanley Hospital.
Dr Khattak said the therapy worked by cutting out a portion of the patient's tumour, which contained a small amount of personalised immune cells, and sending it off to a lab in Philadelphia in the US where it was multiplied by billions.
The treatment included standard immunotherapy followed by surgery, five days of high-dose chemotherapy, the cell infusion from Philadelphia and an interleukin transfusion.
He said while the science was moving towards personalised immunotherapy as a treatment for cancer it remained complicated, and was only offered at a select number of locations.
"These are not off-the-shelf treatments," Dr Khattak said.
"It requires a complex infrastructure and a huge amount of effort. It costs about half a million dollars for one patient and that is provided free of cost in the context of a clinical trial.
"Fiona Stanley is the first site to have dosed the first two patients. The third patient was dosed in Queensland earlier this week.
"There's only three sites active across Australia at the moment and there's another couple that are potentially in the pipeline as well."
Up to one-in-three chance of long-term remission
Dr Khattak said there had already been several trials completed in the US which showed promising results.
"The current trial is trying to find how much benefit this additional treatment will provide on top of the standard immunotherapy," he said.
A recent study in the US involved 25 to 30 patients in a similar position to Mr Braund being given the combination of standard immunotherapy and cell therapy.
"They found there was around a 30-35 per cent chance of going into long-term remission, and that's what we're trying to verify in the context of this larger clinical trial," he said.
"If these results hold true that will be a remarkable achievement — a one-in-three chance of going into long-term remission despite having metastatic disease."
Mr Braund and the other patient at Fiona Stanley Hospital will undergo scans in a couple of weeks to see how the cancer has reacted to the treatment.