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Cancer vanishes for every single patient in breakthrough drug trial
This kind of success rate isn’t believed to have ever happened in the history of cancer
Eighteen bowel cancer patients are now in remission after taking part in a breakthrough drug trial.
Doctors were stunned to find that all traces of cancer in the patients had ‘vanished’ following a one year course of Dostarlimab, a drug with laboratory-produced molecules that act as substitute antibodies in the human body.
Following the trial, the cancer was completely undetectable by physical exam, endoscopy, PET scans or M.R.I. scans.
It was also reported that none of the patients had ‘clinically significant’ complications from the drug.
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Dr Luis A. Diaz Jr. of New York’s Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Centre, said he knew of no other study in which a treatment completely obliterated a cancer in every patient.
Dr. Diaz added that he believes this is the ‘first time this has happened in the history of cancer’.
The study has now been published in the New England Journal of Medicine, and details how the cancer patients had faced gruelling treatments in the past, including chemotherapy, radiation and invasive surgery that could result in bowel, urinary and sexual dysfunction.
Some would even require colostomy bags.
The patients allegedly entered the study believing they would still need to undergo some of these treatments, as no one had ever expected their tumours to fully disappear.
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Dr. Andrea Cercek, an oncologist at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center and co-author of the paper, told The New York Times: “There were a lot of happy tears.”
Dr. Alan Venook, a colorectal cancer specialist at the University of California, was not involved with the study but has hailed the research as a ‘world-first’.
He noted: “A complete remission in every single patient is ‘unheard-of’.”
Bowel cancer – also known as colorectal cancer – is the fourth most common cancer in the UK and the second biggest cancer killer. Nearly 43,000 people are diagnosed with bowel cancer every year in the UK, according to Bowel Cancer UK.