One study showed a 100% positive response rate in 42 patients with a specific type of rectal cancer who were treated with an experimental immunotherapy.
He rectal cancer disappeared in all patients who participated in a small clinical trial of a new immunotherapy treatmentaccording to updated results released this month.
The study was the result of a collaboration between the American cancer center Memorial Sloan Kettering (MSK) and the pharmaceutical company GSK. In it, a new drug called deliveredlimab-gxly to treat patients with a specific type of rectal cancer caused by a genetic mutation.
“As a physician, I have seen firsthand the debilitating impact of standard dMMR rectal cancer treatment and am delighted by the potential of dostarlimab-gxly in these patients,” said in the statement Dr. Andrea Cercek, head of colorectal cancer section at MSK and principal investigator of the study.
MMRd stands for ‘mismatch repair deficient’, which means that cells have a dysfunctional DNA repair system. They account for about five percent of rectal cancers. He current treatment of this type of cancer consists of radiotherapy, chemotherapy, surgery or a combination of both.
According to Dr. Clélia Coutzac, a medical oncologist who was not involved in the study, treatments usually have a strong impact on the patient’s quality of lifefor example with intestinal disorders, intestinal incontinence or sexual dysfunctions.
How does dostarlimab work?
“As dMMR are hypermutated tumors, they are supervisible to the immune system, initially the immune system will see cancer cells as foreign and will go to kill them. After a while, the cancer evolves and eventually the immune system stops working,” Coutzac explains to Euronews Health.
“What works very well in these tumors is that we reactivate the system with immunotherapy and, in this case, with GSK’s dostarlimab, a drug that will guide lymphocytes to recognize cancer cells as harmful and kill them,” he added. .
Patients who followed the treatments for six months showed a complete clinical response, no “evidence of tumors” found by MRI, endoscopy or digital examination during follow-up, according to the GSK statement. Coutzac called the results “astonishing.”
New research in progress
Before dostarlimab – also known by the trade name Jemperli – potentially hits the market to treat MMRd rectal cancer, further research is needed.
A global study called Azur-1 is designed to further test the effectiveness of dostarlimab-gxly when used alone, instead of chemotherapy, radiation therapy or surgery, and to confirm the MSK findings.
