The 91-year-old first announced the news during a Sunday school class in Plains, Ga.
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Immune therapies work differently than older drugs.
“What’s interesting is they are not only effective in treating Melanoma, they have turned out to be effective for other cancers and recently been approved in treatment in lung, stomach, neck and other cancers”, said Lichtenfeld.
“I’ve had a wonderful life”, he said. “We’re on the edge of a revolution in oncology”.
He said he would continue to receive regular doses of pembrolizumab, a new treatment that is part of a promising class of drugs that harness the body’s immune system to fight cancer.
The drug is delivered intravenously every three weeks, costing about $12,500 a month.
Experts are giving credit to both cutting edge medicine and carter’s advanced age. Doctors didn’t find cancer signs during his recent scan.
“It’s become very common to have excellent control of brain metastases with radiation treatment”, he said.
Dec 7, 2015- Former US President Jimmy Carter has said that his brain cancer is gone.
Chemotherapy has traditionally been ineffective against brain cancer because the cancer-killing chemicals have a hard time crossing the blood-brain barrier to attack tumor cells, Lichtenfeld said.
According to WTHR, Carter’s body will be scanned to check whether a new cancer cell has developed.
In August, I reported for Deseret News National on Carter giving his 689th talk the same week his battle with cancer came to the fore. On Sunday, however, he proudly said on Sunday that the cancer is absolutely gone away from his body. But the doctors are the ones who decide how long the candidate should receive their treatments.
“Right from very beginning, I had a good feeling about the President’s prognosis”.
“Not uncommonly, it can spread to organs like the liver and the brain”, said Shepard.
Carter, elected in 1976 and ousted in the 1980 election by Ronald Reagan, has a family history of pancreatic cancer – a disease that claimed his father, brother and two sisters. It’s the best news possible in a hard situation. It’s what we would call a complete response on imaging, which is really really excellent, obviously.
During his treatment, Carter continued to do volunteer work, according to the AP.
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Citing Carter’s grandson, Jason Carter, the Associated Press reports that doctors did not detect any cancer during his previous scan. He had been taking the treatment for melanoma, which included a targeted radiation therapy and immunotherapy drug pembrolizumab. The former president announced the good news at a Sunday school, where the people applauded and celebrated.
