A new study has delivered promising results in eliminating tumors in some early-stage cancers.
The study, published in The New England Journal of Medicine, found that some patients may be able to forgo surgery after undergoing treatment with the immunotherapy drug dostarlimab. Researchers say 82 out of 103 participants, nearly 80%, responded so successfully to the treatment that they no longer required an operation.
The results, while promising, will require further research given the relatively small sample size and the variety of cancers treated among the group. Moreover, some of the patients have not been followed long enough to conclude whether the cancer might return.
The study also targeted a specific group of individuals whose tumors had a “mismatch repair defect,” per ABC News. This means the patients possessed a genetic problem that prevented their cells from fixing damaged DNA and increased the likelihood that they would respond positively to the treatment.
“They kind of selected themselves, in that they had a specific genetic alteration, and that genetic alteration occurs about 2% to 3% of all cancer patients,” said Dr. Luis Diaz, one of the study’s authors and head of the Division of Solid Tumor Oncology at MSK.
Lumps are often detected in early-stage cancer patients who require potentially invasive surgery to remove them. Since these cancers can impact critical organs, surgery can substantially disrupt a patient’s life. Not only that, the surgery is often coupled with aggressive chemotherapy or radiation treatments.
Notably, all 49 patients with early-stage rectal cancer who underwent six months of immunotherapy treatment avoided surgery.
Two years later, more than nine out of 10 of those patients had no tumors present. Furthermore, the first group to make it to the five-year mark was still cancer-free, although that group was small at just four individuals.
Of the remaining 54 individuals in the study who had a mix of different cancers, 35 were found to be cancer-free following the treatment and were able to avoid surgery. Two patients still decided to proceed with surgery for other reasons.