Former President Jimmy Carter announced on Sunday that his cancer is gone.
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The former president apparently shared the good news on Sunday with those filling the congregation of Maranatha Baptist Church for one of his regular Sunday school lessons.
(I) went for an MRI this past week and they (doctors) didn’t find any cancer at all in the brain.
“So a lot of people prayed for me, and I appreciate that”, Carter said. “He said he got a scan this week and the cancer was gone”, Jill Stuckey said via phone from Maranatha, in an article by AJC.com. With old-line chemotherapeutic agents, a patient’s cancer often develops resistance against treatment. It is unclear if pembrolizumab was responsible for ridding the cancerous cells in Carter, as the drug is too new to know if its effects are consistent and repeatable. Carter then told the attendees that his recent MRI scans showed no signs of cancer at all.
Not all cancers will recur, and if cancer cells do survive treatment it could take years before they develop into identifiable disease.
Carter said he will continue to receive does of Keytruda to help his body seek out cancer cells.
The U.S. Food and Drug Administration fast-tracked the approval of Kevtruda previous year after studies showed it extended the lives of patients with advanced melanoma.
Jimmy Carter credits the new cancer drug Keytruda for shrinking his brain tumors completely. He announced the news during a Sunday School class he was teaching, with all in attendance applauding his condition after the announcement.
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He has remained active, despite telling reporters in August that he would scale back on work at The Carter Center, the human rights organization he founded after leaving the White House.
