Former President Jimmy Carter Says His Brain Cancer Is Gone

But when he went this week to doctor, there was no cancer at all.

“I was so happy because I wanted him to get strong and continue on with his work”, said Williams. “So that part of it has been a relief to me and I think to the doctors”.

The Carter Center said in a statement then that Carter’s “original problem is responding well to treatment”.

Ms Stuckey said people filling the sanctuary applauded after Carter’s announcement. As in August, Carter again mentioned the specifics of his care, saying that he would continue to receive intravenous infusion of the immunotherapy Keytruda (pembrolizumab) every three weeks.

Carter, 91, was diagnosed in August with Stage IV melanoma, which had spread to his liver and brain.

Carter first revealed the news to his Sunday School class in Georgia. His first lesson after his cancer announcement drew almost 1,000 people who crammed into a church built for a few hundred; people slept in their cars as they waited overnight for limited first-come, first-served seats.

In November, the Carter Center said the 39th President was responding well to treatment and that there was no evidence of new growth. “Our prayers have been answered”.

And, one of Carter’s physicians at Winship Cancer Institute of Emory University, Dr. David Lawson, happened to be one of several researchers at sites around the country who were studying the effect of these drugs.

Just over a year ago, Keytruda was approved for use in melanoma by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), which is the licensing authority in the US.

Cancer experts had expressed hope that Carter might survive because of this new radiation technique, known as stereotactic radiation, which allows doctors to tightly focus beams on each specific tumor. But with immuno-oncology drugs, he said, “the opposite is true: when a melanoma or other cancer has many mutations, it’s more likely that the immune system can attack them”.