Experimental cancer drugs found to help some patients avoid surgery

The results from an ambitious cancer study are giving hope that immunotherapy drugs alone can treat some gastrointestinal tumors, eliminating the need for severe, life-altering surgeries and other harsh therapies.

For as long as cancer treatment has existed, “cutting it out has been the best way to cure it,” said Luis Diaz, a gastrointestinal medical oncologist at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center in New York and one of the co-leaders of the study, along with Andrea Cercek, also a gastrointestinal medical oncologist with MSK. “This is a complete paradigm shift.”

The approach “gives patients more agency in determining how they want to approach their treatment based on chances of survivorship, but also quality of life and side effects,” said Karen Knudsen, CEO of the Parker Institute for Cancer Immunotherapy.