“It was a small trial, just 18 rectal cancer patients, every one of whom took the same drug,” a report of the stated. This is the first time, a drug trial has fetched such results.
“There were a lot of happy tears,” the Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center and a co-author of the paper, oncologist Dr Andrea Cercek, described the moment patients found out they were cancer-free to New York Times.
The 18 patients that were diagnosed with rectal cancer and had undergone all kinds of treatment including, chemotherapy, radiation and, most likely, life-altering surgery that could result in bowel, urinary and sexual dysfunction.
Some of the patients had to use colostomy bags.
This was their option hoping nothing good was going to come out of it.
On Sunday, a paper was published in the New England Journal of Medicine by Dr. Luis A. Diaz Jr. of Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center. The paper described that all the patients of rectal cancer experienced complete remission.
The study was sponsored by the drug company GlaxoSmithKline.
The study found that cancer was obliterated in every patient, undetectable through physical examination, PET Scan, MRI, or Endoscopy.
“I believe this is the first time this has happened in the history of cancer,” Dr. Diaz said. A complete remission in every single patient is “unheard-of,” he said to New York Times.
The 18 patients took a drug called Dostarlimab for around six months. Dostarlimab is a drug with laboratory-produced molecules that act as substitute antibodies in the human body. For the trial, patients took Dostarlimab every three weeks for six months. The drug unmasks cancer cells, allowing the immune system to identify and destroy them.
Dr. Venook added, was that none of the patients had clinically significant complications.
According to reports, one in five patients have some sort of adverse reaction to drugs like the one the patients took, Dostarlimab, known as checkpoint inhibitors.
The patients were in similar stages of their cancer-the cancer had locally advanced in the rectum, however, it had not spread to other organs.
After the drug trial was done, tot he patients’ surprise, no further treatment would be required, unlike what they had previously expected.
Now, the cancer researchers who reviewed the drug told the media outlet that the treatment looks promising, but a larger-scale trial is needed to see if it will work for more patients and if the cancers are truly in remission.
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