As word spread from Maranatha Baptist Church, Carter issued a brief statement confirming the scan showed no signs of the four lesions that doctors discovered this summer on his brain or new cancer growth. Carter notes that he missed various classes in May and June.
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According to WebMD, in the past patients with melanoma that had spread to the brain could expect to live six to 12 months. Previous tests found four lesions on his brain were still there but had responded to an August radiation treatment and regular doses of a recently approved drug called Keytruda to help his body seek out any new cancer cells. The drug goes by the name Keytruda commercially.
Cancer cells develop receptors that basically cloak them from the immune system, preventing the body from recognizing and targeting the abnormal cells, Demopoulos said.
PD-1 stops immune cells from attacking normal healthy cells by mistake. Keytruda, an engineered immune protein called a monoclonal antibody, disrupts this cloaking effect and lets the immune cells do their job and eat the tumor cell. Three days after the announcement, Carter was teaching Sunday school per his usual routine.
“When I went this week, they didn’t find any cancer at all”, Carter broke the news at the class, amid surprised responses and cheering.
It’s unusual, but not unheard of. “When you talk about melanoma in the brain and you find it at a small size, the treatments can be more effective”. Instead, they may say things like, “The cancer can’t be seen on the scan” or “I see no evidence of any cancer”. It nearly always comes back.
Oncologists are concerned about giving chemotherapy drugs to older cancer patients because of the toxicity issues, which can cause nausea and fatigue.
Dr. Antoni Ribas of the University of California Los Angeles led that trial. Dr. Marc Ernstoff of the Cleveland Clinic Taussig Cancer Institute in OH told Reuters that only 5% of patients treated with pembrolizumab achieve full remission. That’s because cancers don’t come from outside the body; they are malignant versions of a patient’s own cells.
Jill Stuckey, a member of the church said the day started as a typical one, with Carter and his wife Rosalyn, entering the premises filled with about 300 people for Sunday school. He received a round of radiation targeting those tumors and doses of Keytruda every three weeks. Lisa Bonchek Adams, who died in March from metastatic breast cancer, expressed this beautifully in her poem “When I Die”.
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“I’ve had a wonderful life”, he said.
