“When I went this week, they didn’t find any cancer at all, so I have good news”, Mr Carter told the crowd at Maranatha Baptist Church in his hometown of Plains on Sunday, according to a video from NBC News.
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Former President Jimmy Carter says a recent brain scan showed no signs of cancer while he is being treated with a drug called Keytruda.
Former President Jimmy Carter credits the new cancer drug Keytruda for shrinking his brain tumors completely. “I will continue to receive regular three-week immunotherapy treatments of pembrolizumab”, Carter said in a statement.
While undergoing treatment, which also included radiation therapy, Carter stayed busy teaching Sunday school and participating in a Habitat for Humanity build, reports Reuters. Scientists have been seriously exploring using the immune system to battle cancerous cells for decades as an alternative to chemotherapy, radiation therapy, and surgery.
Someone like the 91-year-old Carter who has reported few side effects after several months is likely to see the same success.
Dr. Richard Frank, of the Western Connecticut Health Network, says the drug – which is approved to treat melanoma and kidney and lung cancers – is making revolutionary strides in fighting the disease.
“People who respond to drugs like Keytruda tend to respond for a while”, said Turnham, who has no personal knowledge of Carter’s case. However, the immune system has a harder time identifying cancer cells as foreign, sometimes due to the fact that they don’t appear different enough from normal cells or the immune system isn’t powerful enough to take on the cancer. So chances are very, very good that Jimmy Carter will continue to do well going forward and not have trouble with cancer in the future.
Based on my reading and my personal experience, I can’t imagine that any oncologist would suggest that cancer of a patient under active treatment is gone or has disappeared. “But the final result of how well the treatments are combatting or controlling the cancer, we don’t know yet”.
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“There’s always the suspicion there are other small lesions and cancer cells”.
