While speaking at his Georgia church on Sunday, the 91-year-old former president said that his latest brain scan showed no sign of cancer.
Advertisement
He expects Carter’s doctors will continue “close surveillance” for any new cancer growth or recurrence in his brain and continue doses of the immunotherapy drug as long as Carter handles it well. A previous MRI test showed the four spots of cancer that had developed on his brain were responding to treatment, he said.
However, cancer experts told NBC News that it is not completely clear whether the drug cured Carter on its own, and that advanced forms of the cancer have been known to disappear and return.
Researched in Israel by Professor Jacob Schachter of the Ella Institute for melanoma treatment and research at the Sheba Medical Center in Tel Hashomer, Keytruda is part of a promising new class of drugs called immunotherapies, which harness the body’s immune system to help fight cancer. Following the surgery, Carter announced that his doctors had discovered four small melanoma lesions in his brain, confirming a suspicion the specialists had shared with him at the time of the surgery.
While the news is exceptionally positive and encouraging for Carter, Dr. Len Lichtenfeld from American Cancer Society cautiously reminded the public that the former statesman is not perfectly safe from cancer.
“It’s become very common to have excellent control of brain metastases with radiation treatment”, he said. “They work in a very different way, they activate the immune system instead of directly targeting the cancer cells and they are in most cases very well tolerated. That’s wonderful progress in a short period of time”. “I haven’t been uncomfortable or ill after the treatments were over”.
“Yes, these drugs are expensive, but they save a lot of lives”, Demopoulos said. “So that part of it has been a relief to me and I think to the doctors”.
Carter’s treatment began with the removal of a lesion on his liver in early August.
Carter subsequently underwent focused radiation therapy to eradicate the brain lesions and initiated a 12-week course of treatment with pembrolizumab.
Advertisement
“I have seen this in other patients with metastatic melanoma”, said Gary K. Schwartz, MD, of Columbia University Medical Center in New York City. In October, he announced he was also working with the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.’s heirs to help mediate their dispute over whether to sell their father’s 1964 Nobel Peace Prize medal and the Bible he carried during the civil rights movement. But there is a downside to taking multiple drugs: more side effects. However, it could be another 3 to 5 years before Mr. Carter can be declared to have been completely cured.
