The trial — conducted by Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center in Manhattan — involved at least 12 rectal cancer patients who took a drug called dostarlimab.
The patients involved in the clinical trial all had tumors with a specific genetic makeup known as mismatch repair-deficient (MMRd), a press release from Memorial Sloan Kettering indicated.
“It’s incredibly rewarding to get these happy tears and happy emails from the patients in this study who finish treatment and realize, ‘Oh my God, I get to keep all my normal body functions that I feared I might lose to radiation or surgery,’” Dr. Andrea Cercek, a Memorial Sloan Kettering oncologist, said in the release.
The cancer center is also looking into how dostarlimab might be able to help patients with other kinds of cancer that have MMRd tumors as well, such as stomach, prostate and pancreatic cancer.
source: Fox News