For a limited group of cancer patients who have solid tumors in the stomach, rectum, esophagus and other organs, an immunotherapy trial offered stunning results.
When a person develops solid tumors in the stomach or esophagus or rectum, oncologists know how to treat them. But the cures often come with severe effects on quality of life. That can include removal of the stomach or bladder, a permanent colostomy bag, radiation that makes patients infertile and lasting damage from chemotherapy.
So a research group at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, using a drug from the pharmaceutical company GSK, tried something different.
The researchers started with a group of 103 people. The trial participants were among the 2 to 3 percent of cancer patients with tumors that should respond to immunotherapy, a drug that overcomes barriers that prevent the immune system from attacking cancers.
But in clinical trials, immunotherapy is not supposed to replace the standard treatments. The researchers, led by Dr. Luis A. Diaz Jr. and Dr. Andrea Cercek, decided to give dostarlimab, an immunotherapy drug, on its own.
The result was stunning, and could bring hope to the limited cohort of patients contending with these cancers.
In 49 of the patients, who had rectal cancer, the tumors disappeared and, after five years, have not recurred. Cancers also vanished for 35 of 54 patients who had other cancers, including in the stomach, esophagus, liver, endometrium, urinary tract and prostate.
