THIS US DRUG TRIAL CURED ALL CANCER PATIENTS

(The Quiver): You can call it a miracle . For the ‘first time in history’, in a small clinical trial it is found that every single rectal cancer patient who received this experimental treatment found that their cancer had vanished.

The world may soon be able to get rid of a dreaded disease that has claimed lives of millions of people in the world , which is cancer. For the first time, a drug trial has shown 100% eradication of cancer in patients at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center in Manhattan, US.

An Indian-origin patient was among those who had a “miracle” cure using a cancer medication that is being tried out by a research centre here, achieving an unprecedented healing rate when all 14 patients in the trial had their cancers disappear.”

It’s a miracle”, Nisha Varughese said about the immunotherapy drug’s efficacy in curing her.

In the trial at the Memorial Sloan Kettering (MSK) Cancer Centre in New York using dostarlimab, “the rectal cancer disappeared after immunotherapy — without the need for the standard treatments of radiation, surgery, or chemotherapy — and the cancer has not returned in any of the patients, who have been cancer-free for up to two years,” the MSK said.

How the Immunotherapy Works?

MSK explained that “immunotherapy harnesses the body’s own immune system as an ally against cancer”.

It said, “The Immune cells contain a safeguard called a checkpoint, to prevent them from attacking normal cells. Cancer cells can trip this safeguard and shut down immune cells, allowing a tumour to hide and grow.”

Immunotherapy uses what is called a “checkpoint inhibitor” that frees immune cells to recognise and attack cancer cells, it added.