Jimmy Carter says doctors can’t find any cancer

Last month, Carter, a devout Christian who teaches Sunday school at Maranatha Baptist Church in Plains, said he was responding well to treatment and there were no signs of further cancer growth. I am not cancer-free but I am surviving with it and basically doing well,”she said”.

For now, President Carter will continue part of his treatment as he announced, and his status will likely be regularly monitored. The lesion on his liver was removed on August 12.

“I went to the doctors this week for the second time”, Carter said in a video posted on Twitter by NBC News.

In an effort to “control” his cancer, Carter underwent four rounds of radiation, which made him a candidate for pembrolizumab, commonly known as Keytruda, made by Merck & Co.

But cancer experts note that it’s not at all clear that the drug itself is what shrank Carter’s tumors.

Immunologic drugs differ from traditional treatment in that they are a “targeted” therapy that bolsters the immune system to fight the cancer, as opposed to the conventional drug treatment for cancer, which is chemotherapy.

While about 30 percent of patients treated with the drug experience significant shrinkage of their cancer, only approximately 5 percent experience complete remission, said Dr. Marc Ernstoff, director of the melanoma program at the Cleveland Clinic’s Taussig Cancer Institute in Ohio.

Biologically, he had a couple things happen, because he got radiation, which damaged his cancer, and he got [the drug] Keytruda. It’s the best news possible in a hard situation.

CNN interviewed Dr. Leonard Lichtenfeld, deputy chief medical officer for the American Cancer Society, about Carter’s announcement.

Not all cancers will recur, and if cancer cells do survive treatment it could take years before they develop into identifiable disease. The interaction between the two genes lets some tumors escape detection and destruction by immune system cells.

Shepard said the recently-approved drug and others like it are important. Doctors now talk about treating cancer as a chronic disease, similar to diabetes and heart disease, Shepard said. “So that part of it has been a relief to me and I think to the doctors”.

Lowering the cost of treatment, IGCS says, could make it accessible to more patients.