100%, A+: The first cancer drug to ace a clinical trial

In a medical first, a clinical drug trial featuring a dozen rectal cancer patients ended with a 100% remission rate, according to a peer-reviewed study published Sunday in the New England Journal of Medicine.

• The GlaxoSmithKline-sponsored trial focused on immunotherapy, aka harnessing the body’s own immune system to fight off disease.

🦠 How it works: Normally, immune cells contain a safeguard preventing them from attacking healthy cells. Cancer cells are able to hijack that safeguard, allowing a tumor to hide and grow.

• The scientists’ new immunotherapy drug, called dostarlimab, is designed to turn off the safeguard, allowing immune cells to recognize and attack patients’ cancer cells.
• After taking dostarlimab every three weeks for six months, all 12 patients showed no signs of cancer six months after completing the treatment – without needing surgery, radiation or chemotherapy.

✋ Yes, but… In a peer-reviewed editorial accompanying the study, outside experts stressed that its sample size is too small to draw conclusions, and the drug’s results need to be replicated in a much larger study before it can become a conventional treatment.