Small-Scale Study of New Colon Cancer Treatment Yields 100% Success Rate

By Matis Glenn

A group of 18 people suffering from colo-rectal cancers took part in an experimental trial of a new drug, dostarlimab, at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center. Surprisingly, not one of them shows any signs of their cancer remaining, after rigorous biopsies and scans. A 100% success rate, even in a small sample study such as this, is extremely rare. The results were published recently 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 patients followed up from 6 to 25 months after seeing their negative test results, and none of them showed signs of the disease returning.

Conventional treatment of colo-rectal cancer consists of chemotherapy and/or surgeries which can have lifelong-lasting consequences, sometimes resulting in the irreversible use of a colostomy bag.

Some medical professionals are cautiously optimistic. While the results are “compelling”, still, “Very little is known about the duration of time needed to find out whether a clinical complete response to dostarlimab equates to cure,” Dr. Hanna K. Sanoff of the University of North Carolina’s Lineberger Comprehensive Cancer Center wrote in an editorial accompanying the paper, the Times mentioned.

mglenn@hamodia.com