New drug, Dostarlimab, eliminates rectal cancer

Scientists in a new discovery say they have found a drug named Dostarlimab that simply made rectal cancer vanish in patients after the experimental treatment.

The drug, in a clinical trial involving 18 patients battling with rectal cancer at the Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center in Manhattan, US, works by “unmasking” cancer cells, which in turn helps the immune system to identify and destroy the cancer.

In all patients, rectal cancer was locally advanced. This means the tumours had spread within the rectum, and in some cases, to the lymph nodes, but not to other organs.

The patients involved in the clinical trial had undergone previous treatments to manage their cancer, including chemotherapy, radiation, and invasive surgery. Post the trial, they were able to be taken off painful chemotherapy and radiation sessions.

The drug was administered to the patients for a period of six months. The medicine was given in prescribed dosages every three weeks for the period. At the end of the trial, cancer was checked for and remained undetected through different methods to confirm the absence of cancer.

Patients showed a complete absence of significant post-treatment complications as well as any signs of recurrence of cancer in the patients even more than TWO years after the expiration of the trial.

According to researchers, this was the first time that all the patients in a cancer trial were completely healed with medication and they did not have serious side effects.

The study sponsored by the drug company GlaxoSmithKline was published in the New England Journal of Medicine and featured at the nation’s target gathering of clinical oncologists in June 2022.

Rectal cancer is a tumour that arises from the lowermost part of the digestive tract, just proximal to the anal canal. It usually spreads to the lymph nodes that line it, prior to its spread to other distant organs, when it is deemed an advanced disease.

Rectal cancer is usually detected in advanced stages as it is generally ignored by many thinking that it is pile. Traditionally, it has been treated with a combination of chemotherapy, radiotherapy and surgery. So, it’s a very intensive treatment and there can be significant side effects.

Dostarlimab has also shown promising results in endometrial (lining of the womb) cancer, ovarian cancer, melanoma, head and neck cancer, and breast cancer therapy.

Dr. Luis Alberto Diaz, Jr., one of the trial leaders and a medical oncologist at Memorial Sloan Kettering (MSK) Cancer Center, in a remark said “It’s too soon to say whether the patients will all remain in remission or if the drug will work for others with different types of rectal cancer; but the results are “cause for great optimism.”