"I live as full and as active life as I can. I want for my children, I want everything to be as normal, you know I want to be a dad that goes out to work and comes home at the end of the day, you know things are normal."
Four years ago Richard Jackson was told skin cancer was going to kill him.
He's still in remission but a new drug called Ipilimumab - described as the biggest breakthrough in melanoma treatment for 30 years - has given him and thousands of others hope. "I had lesions mainly over the top half of my body, mainly over my torso. some of the lesions would be golf-ball size, some would be tennis ball size on my back and on my neck. When I had the treatment we could see that that they changed color from the first treatment and we watched some of the lesions actually disappear you know, overnight."
Another new drug called Vemura Fenib also appears to give patients a greater chance of surviving longer than chemotherapy.
Vemurafenib targets a faulty gene found in half of terminally ill patients whose cancer has spread to other organs.
The trial showed 84% of patients given the drug lived an extra 6 months compared with 64% who had chemotherarpy.
In a separate study, a one off-course of Ipili Mumab meant patients who would have died in weeks or months survived years afterwards - one patient live 5 more years.
"These two new drugs are the first breakthrough in melanoma treatment for the past 30 years and they are not curative but they give a significant extension of life in patients and the important point is that they break the paradigm that melanoma is rarely an untreatable disease," says Prof. Richard Marais, Inst. for Cancer Research.
In Richard Jackson's case there were strong side effects from the treatment including weight loss and dietary problems. But he's certain without the new drug he and his family would have been left to face the worst.
