A small group of people suffering from colorectal cancer experienced something of a scientific miracle: their disease simply disappeared after an experimental treatment.
In a small study conducted by doctors at New York Cancer Center Memorial Sloan Kettering, patients took a drug called dostarlimab for six months. As a result of the test, the tumor disappeared from each of them. The trial group included only 18 people. It is reported that scientists still have a lot to learn about how this treatment worked, but some already say that such results have never been seen in the history of cancer research.
Dr. Hannah Sanoff of the University of North Carolina's Lineberger Comprehensive Cancer Center commented on the news:
“We have never seen a cancer drug work 100%. This drug belongs to a class of so-called "immune checkpoint inhibitors". They do not act by directly affecting cancer cells, but by forcing the human immune system to do this work itself. These are drugs that have been used for a long time for melanoma and other types of cancer, but until recently were not used to treat colorectal cancer. Surprisingly, most cured patients had no serious side effects at all.
I hope that this treatment will lead to life-changing effects for people who have had this type of cancer. I have had patients who, after suffering from rectal cancer, hardly left their homes for many years - and in some cases even decades - due to the consequences of urinary incontinence and the associated shame.
Now we need to conduct a larger study in which this drug would be used in a much more diverse setting to understand what the actual number of people cured will be. Even if in the end it will not be a 100 percent result. So far, I can’t even imagine these 100%!”