In a recent study at the Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, 18 cancer patients were testing a new treatment for the disease, and the results found that cancer was completely eradicated in all 18 patients.
The funding was sponsored by GlaxoSmithKline, and the shocking results have never been seen in the history of cancer research.
Dr. Louis Diaz published an article about the study in the New England Journal of Medicine.
Though the test was small, Diaz stated that the results were completely unparalleled in the cancer research world.
“I believe this is the first time this has happened in the history of cancer,” Diaz wrote.
After taking the drugs, patients were given physical exams, endoscopy, PET scans and MRI scans, but the cancer remained gone.
Known as Dostarlimab, the drug was approved by the FDA in 2021, and the recent test trials appear to show the drug’s efficacy with certain cancers.
In an interview with CNN, Dr. Andrea Cercek explained that the results were “completely unexpected” and “incredible.”
“It’s really what a cancer doctor’s dreams are made of,” she said. “To see such incredible efficacy with really no toxicity.”
Cercek explained that with usual treatments for rectal cancer patients, high toxicity remains within patients; however, the recent results show zero side effects.
Some doctors remain skeptical of the new results. Dr. Hanna Sanoff wrote in an editorial that the results were promising but more testing would need to be done. “Very little is known about the duration of time needed to find out whether a clinical complete response to Dostarlimab equates to cure,” Sanoff wrote.
