NYC Cancer Trial Delivers ‘Unheard-of' Result: Complete Remission for Everyone

[xeroborn55]

Link

A small NYC-led cancer trial has achieved a result reportedly never before seen - the total remission of cancer in all of its patients.


To be sure, the trial — led by doctors at Memorial Sloan Kettering and backed by drug maker GlaxoSmithKline — has only completed treatment of 12 patients, with a specific cancer in its early stages and with a rare mutation as well.


But the results, reported Sunday in the New England Journal of Medicine and the New York Times, were still striking enough to prompt multiple physicians to tell the paper they were believed to be unprecedented.


One cancer specialist told the Times it was an "unheard-of" result.

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I don't post a ton of threads, but I thought this was really cool. Even if it doesn't lead to a true 'cure' maybe it will show other benefits with further research.

Some more info about the drug here.

What Are Monoclonal Antibodies?

Monoclonal antibodies like dostarlimab are laboratory-made antibodies design to fight specific illnesses.

The term became more widely known in the last two years as a variety of monoclonal antibodies came out to treat COVID-19.


Dostarlimab is specifically designed to block a particular protein involved in cancer cells called PD-1.


In the Memorial Sloan Kettering trial with rectal cancer, all of the patients' tumors also had a feature known as mismatch repair deficiency.

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[MoonCoffee8]

You need to know right now this is a trial drug looking at 12 patients for a local, non-advanced rectal cancer with a specific mutation. It does not apply to other rectal cancers, let alone other cancers overall. These early trials happen every month and are not worth public reporting

 

[John Harker]

My younger brother was a cancer patient at Sloan for two years. He passed away from osteosarcoma at the age 25. This was years ago.

I want to believe that one day they'll crack the code, so. Tho I've read a thousand articles and had false hope a thousand times, I'm still happy to hear any progress so thx for sharing.

 

[xeroborn55]

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[hockeypuck]

You need to know right now this is a trial drug looking at 12 patients for a local, non-advanced rectal cancer with a specific mutation. It does not apply to other rectal cancers, let alone other cancers overall. These early trials happen every month and are not worth public reporting

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Why do you consider stage III as non-advanced?

I personally find 12 patients to have a complete pathological response to this specific type of cancer with the use of a single agent, foregoing not only surgery but also pelvic radiation, to be pretty remarkable. If results bear out in larger sample sizes, it joins imatinib in that rarefied class.

 

[devilhawk]

Opdivo/Nivo and Keytruda/Pembro are pd1 inhibitors already on the market. It's great that there may be newer, better monoclonals targeting cd279/pd1 like this drug, but we should be realistic here.

 

[Nepenthe]

Thread locked at OP's request.