Medical students learning

An experimental cancer drug has shown a success rate of 100% in a small study trial on patients with re**al cancer by doctors at the New York’s Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center.

The 18 participants were reportedly administered an experimental drug called dostarlimab for six months and following the trial, every single one of their tumors was found to have disappeared.

Much remains unknown about the drug and how the treatment trial was successful, however, there appears great optimism amongst scientists who say such a success rate has never been recorded in the history of the field.

The United States Food and Drug Authority (FDA) had only approved the drug for human trial “for at least 300 patients across all tumor types” in early August last year, according to the FDA website.

In an interview with NPR, Dr Hanna Sanoff - who is one of the people who have written about the results – explained the mechanism by which the drug works

This drug is one of a class of drugs called immune checkpoint inhibitors. These are immunotherapy medicines that work not by directly attacking the cancer itself, but actually getting a person's immune system to essentially do the work. These are drugs that have been around in melanoma and other cancers for quite a while, but really have not been part of the routine care of colore**al cancers until fairly recently,” she explained