#AS­CO22: Rare bio­mark­er leads to ‘un­prece­dent­ed’ re­sults in small rec­tal can­cer study

In an on­go­ing, 18-per­son study, every sin­gle pa­tient that has com­plet­ed treat­ment saw their rec­tal can­cer com­plete­ly dis­ap­pear.

None of them need­ed chemother­a­py, ra­di­a­tion, or surgery — the com­bi­na­tion that makes up the stan­dard of care for rec­tal can­cer.

In­stead, the pa­tients were treat­ed with a six-month course of dostar­limab, the PD-1 an­ti­body mar­ket­ed as Jem­per­li that GSK ac­quired when it bought Tesaro in 2018. The pre­req­ui­site for re­ceiv­ing Jem­per­li, how­ev­er, was that pa­tients had ear­ly-stage, lo­cal­ized rec­tal can­cer with a rare bio­mark­er known as mis­match re­pair-de­fi­cient (MMR-de­fi­cient).

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