According to The New York Times, an investigational medicine appeared to cure rectal cancer in exceptional research.
A group of 18 patients took the medicine Dostarlimab for around six months, and at the end of it, all of their tumors had vanished.
Dr. Luis Diaz, one of the paper’s authors, told the New York Times that he couldn’t recall any prior trial in which cancer was completely eradicated in patients.
“I believe this is the first time this has happened in the history of cancer,” Diaz added.
The patients in the study had already undergone arduous treatments such as chemotherapy, radiation, and, most likely, life-altering surgery that could result in the bowel, urinary, and sexual problems, according to the New York Times.
Complete remission in every single patient, according to Dr. Alan Venook, a colon cancer specialist at the University of California, is “unheard-of.”
The absence of major side effects suggested that “either they [patients] did not treat enough patients or, somehow, these malignancies are simply plain different,” according to Venook, who praised the research as a world-first.
Dr. Hanna K. Sanoff of the University of North Carolina’s Lineberger Comprehensive Cancer Center, who was not involved in the study, called it “small but compelling” in an editorial accompanying the report, but said it was unclear whether the patients were cured.
“Very little is known about the duration of time needed to find out whether a clinical complete response to dostarlimab equates to cure,” Sanoff said.
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