Good News: Drug Has 100% Success Rate on 18 Patients With Colorectal Cancer in New Trial

Hmm.

18 patients is a decent lot, and "100% remission rate" is great.

I know there have been dozens and dozens of "cancer may be cured" stories in the past, but read through this one, this might finally really be it. Or, at least: the beginning of the end.

A recent drug trial administered to a handful of cancer patients had the surprising result of eliminating the disease in every participant involved.

The study was conducted on 18 rectal cancer patients at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center in Manhattan and had a 100 percent success rate, according to a paper published Sunday in the New England Journal of Medicine.

"I believe this is the first time this has happened in the history of cancer," Dr. Luis A. Diaz Jr, the author of the paper, told the New York Times.

The drug, dostarlimab, was administered to each patient every three weeks for six months.

Participants in the study were suffering from rectal cancer and were given alternatives such as chemotherapy or a difficult surgery that could potentially lead to bowel or urinary dysfunction. Some patients are required to use a colostomy bag due to treatment, the Times said.

At the conclusion of the drug trial, however, the patients were spared the agony of potentially damaging treatment when they showed no evidence of a tumor after receiving an MRI, rectal examination and biopsy.

"There were a lot of happy tears," Dr. Andrea Cercek, an oncologist at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, told the Times.

In addition to not needing further treatment to eradicate the disease, there were no instances of a recurrence of cancer in the patients during follow-up appointments from six to 25 months after the trial ended.

But while the results are "compelling," Dr. Hanna K. Sanoff of the University of North Carolina's Lineberger Comprehensive Cancer Center, who was not involved in the study, said it is not clear if the patients are cured.

The drug is a monoclonal antibody, a kind of cloned white blood cell, which I think are programmed to attach to tumor cells and cause them to eaten by the body's immune system/self-cleaning system.

If I understand this, and I probably don't, cells have a kind receptor on their outsides which tells the body "don't eat me, I'm part of you." Cancer cells retain this "Friend" signaling, despite now being a very deadly Foe.

But these antibodies bond with the receptors on tumor cells specifically and turn those receptors off, so the tumorous cells are no longer signaling that they're a Friend, so now the immune system sees them for what they are: Foe.

Below, Dr. Marc Siegel partially confirms this: Cancer cells are "invisible" to the body's immune system and is able to infiltrate the body's tissues. This treatment turns off its "cloaking mode" and exposes them to the immune system's defenses.

These patients had advanced colorectal cancer with a specific mutation, which makes this type of cancer hard to treat with chemotherapy or surgery "Stage II/III mismatch repair-deficient (dMMR)."

So although that mutation made this treatment especially necessary for these patients, other patients don't need that mutation to benefit from this treatment. Dr. Siegel says that this type of treatment should be applicable to a variety of cancers. particularly those that "mutate a lot" like blood cancers and breast cancer.

He says that this treatment is already being used and has a 30-50% success rate. The 100% success rate here represents a substantial advance.

Oh, and he points out this drug is already on the market, so if you or a loved one is being treated for cancer, ask a doctor about it. The trial is new, and the treatment of colorectal cancer is a new application for the drug, but the drug itself is already being used for breast cancer.

I hope this is finally it. This sounds like what they've been talking about as the Holy Grail for 20 years: Finally de-cloaking cancer cells so the body's natural immune response to attack and destroy them.

Once the immune system starts eating these tumorous cells, they're dead. I mean, game over. That is the ultimate defense against cancer.

posted by Ace at 04:48 PM

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