“I believe this is the first time this has happened in the history of cancer,” Luis Diaz Jr., MD, an author of the study and an oncologist at New York City-based Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, told the Times.
Dostarlimab was administered to 12 patients with stage 2 or 3 rectal cancer every three weeks for six months. This treatment was to be followed by standard chemoradiotherapy and surgery, but patients with complete clinical responses were to proceed without.
All participants in the trial experienced a complete clinical response and none have reported progression or recurrence during the six months of follow-up.
The study was published June 5 in The New England Journal of Medicine.
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