Major breakthrough! New drug can cure colorectal cancer 100% within 6 months. Will cancer no longer threaten humans?

In recent days, the violent incident at a hot pot restaurant in Tangshan has dominated the news, so much so that many friends have overlooked a piece of news that is related to the future health and longevity of mankind. Today I will pick it up again and talk about it so that more people will know about it. People condemn the Tangshan attackers and pay attention to the development of the incident in order to save the human soul; this incident has the same goal, which is to save mankind and save lives.

This is an important research result published in the New England Journal of Medicine on June 5, that is, GlaxoSmithKline, the world's ninth largest pharmaceutical company, has produced a miracle anti-cancer drug, an immunotherapy drug called dostarlimab, which actually cured 12 rectal cancer patients without surgery, radiotherapy or chemotherapy!

The key word is 100%! This is a miracle. I think the significance of this event is no less than the successful explosion of the first atomic bomb. The atomic bomb is a weapon of mass destruction, and if this drug is put on the market, it will be a "weapon" to save humanity on a large scale. So how much power does this new technology have in eradicating cancer in the future? Now I will share with you the whole story.

This drug is just an immunotherapy drug for colorectal cancer/

The Chinese name of this drug is translated as "Dostalimab", which was developed by GlaxoSmithKline and obtained by the Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Institute (MSK) in the United States through a small clinical trial. According to the interpretation of the original paper, this drug is actually a way to repair genetic errors, that is, to correct the mismatched base pairs on the DNA double helix, so that the normal nucleotide sequence is restored, thereby enhancing the patient's immunity to eliminate cancer cells.

The paper states: There is a subpopulation of colorectal cancer caused by insufficient mismatch repair, and in the context of metastatic disease, mismatch repair-deficient colorectal cancer responds to long-term programmed death 1 (PD-1) blockade, so it is hypothesized that checkpoint blockade may be effective in patients with advanced colorectal cancer with mismatch repair deficiency.

These professional terms are obscure and difficult to understand. To put it simply, after using this drug, it can repair the patient's genes and rebuild the body's immunity, thereby curing colorectal cancer. Therefore, it is also called a new immunotherapy.

The scientific name of dostalimab is anti-PD-1 monoclonal antibody, which targets patients with stage II or III rectal adenocarcinoma with mismatch repair defects. According to this requirement, the clinical trial recruited 30 patients with stage II or III dMMR rectal cancer, that is, patients with mid-to-late stage rectal cancer with mismatch repair defects. These patients all had large tumors and had no experience of surgery or chemotherapy.

Then 18 patients were screened out of the 30 patients, and only 16 patients participated in the trial. The age of the participants ranged from 26 to 78 years old, with a median age of 54 years old, and 62% of them were female. Of the 16 patients tested, 15 were in clinical phase III and 1 was in clinical phase II. Symptoms included rectal bleeding in 88%, constipation in 31%, and abdominal pain in 25%.

The trial method was to intravenously inject dostalimab once every 3 weeks, 500 mg each time, for 6 weeks (9 cycles), with a total dose of 5040cGy, divided into 28 doses. Only 12 patients in the trial finally completed 6 months of treatment and were followed up for at least 6 months.

Medical examinations found that the clinical symptoms of these 12 patients were completely relieved. These examinations included but were not limited to magnetic resonance imaging, tomography, endoscopic evaluation, rectal examination and biopsy, and no evidence of tumors was found in each examination. The cancer cells magically disappeared. These patients did not undergo any radiotherapy, chemotherapy or surgery, and the follow-up period was 6 to 25 months, and there was no recurrence case.

This cure result is more powerful and perfect than any previous drug and is a miracle in the long and difficult exploration of cancer treatment methods!

The impact of this achievement on the future of cancer treatment/

This trial is only for colorectal cancer, and only for colorectal cancer with gene mismatch repair deficiency. This cancer is only a subgroup of colorectal cancer, and the proportion of patients with gene mismatch repair deficiency only accounts for 5-10% of the total number of colorectal cancer patients.

Colorectal cancer is the collective name for colon cancer and rectal cancer, and is a general term for cancers that occur anywhere in the human colon. This cancer is one of the most common malignant tumors of the digestive tract, accounting for 9.7% of the total number of cancer patients in the world, ranking third among cancers, and is also one of the most dangerous cancers.

Colorectal cancer has become the second most common cancer in China. Once diagnosed, 83% of patients are in the middle or late stages, that is, stage II or III, and the 5-year survival rate is only 14%. More than 280,000 people die from this cancer every year in the country, equivalent to 32 people per hour, or about 780 people die from colorectal cancer every day.

Therefore, this achievement will save many lives. Even if it only targets 5-10% of colorectal cancer, 14,000 to 28,000 more people will survive each year. In fact, the significance of this achievement is far more than that. It is to continuously break new scientific paths for mankind to eventually eliminate the threat of cancer.

Cancer has become one of the biggest threats to human health and longevity. According to statistics from the World Health Organization, there were 19.29 million new cancer patients in the world in 2020 alone. Including the existing cancer patients over the years, I think the total number of cancer patients is at least two to three times this number. Among them, there were 1.93 million new cases of rectal cancer in 2020, and there should be at least 5 million existing patients (estimated). In this way, the advent of this drug can save at least 250,000 to 500,000 lives.

More importantly, this is a trial of a new method, which has opened up new ideas and successful cases for the development of new drugs in the future. In a sense, I think this should also be considered a targeted drug, which achieves therapeutic effects by repairing certain defects in genes in a targeted manner. Targeted drugs are new technologies and products that have become increasingly popular in the fight against cancer in recent years.

Prospects of targeted drugs in anti-cancer treatment/

In fact, various new cancer drugs have been continuously launched in recent years. Among them, the most effective are new drugs that work at the genetic and immune levels. The more representative ones are targeted drugs. These drugs kill cancer cells at the molecular level as accurately as guided missiles without damaging normal cells. They play a huge role in patients with stage II and III cancer that have already metastasized widely when radiotherapy, chemotherapy and surgery are futile.

I know several acquaintances who were saved by the advent of targeted drugs. When their diagnosis came out, the doctors helplessly told their families that there was no point in surgery and chemotherapy, and that they should go home and eat well for the last two or three months. The family members who heard this were struck by lightning, as if they were sentenced to death and executed immediately.

But doctors from another hospital pointed out a new way for them: do genetic testing to see if there are any targets, and if so, try targeted drugs. Fortunately, they found the target, which is the corresponding driver gene mutation. With this target, targeted drugs can accurately kill cancer cells.

They took targeted drugs as prescribed by the doctor, and the cancer cells were quickly killed. In just one or two months, all physical examination indicators returned to normal, and their bodies recovered from a emaciated and weak state to a rosy complexion. These targeted drugs were very expensive at first, but later they were gradually included in medical insurance, and the personal burden became lighter and lighter, and they could completely afford it.

Five years have passed, and they are still healthy and happy, living like normal people. Cancer has become a rich disease, or a chronic disease, for them.

In fact, almost all cancers are caused by gene mutations and immune system problems due to various reasons. As long as we start from this perspective, figure out the pathogenesis at the genetic molecular level, and then develop drugs that can repair these gene defects and damaged immune systems, cancer can be cured.

There are many types of cancer, each with different pathological and therapeutic mechanisms, so it is a long way to go to develop drugs to treat all cancers. But I believe that as long as we adhere to the scientific spirit and scientific methods, and with the continuous improvement of scientific and technological civilization, cancer will eventually be kicked out of the list of hazards to human health and life span.

In this sense, the development of an immunotherapy drug that can 100% cure dMMR colorectal cancer is just a signal to stimulate further progress. The key lies in 100%, which indicates that future drugs will become increasingly precise and efficient, giving people hope for overall success.

So I said earlier that such an achievement is even more exciting than the successful explosion of the first atomic bomb. What do you think about this? Welcome to discuss, thank you for reading.

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