Jimmy Carter: ‘Scans Show No Signs of Brain Cancer’

But stereotactic radiosurgery focuses the beams better on the tumor, so it can kill the cancer cells more effectively while sparing the healthy ones. Carter notes that he missed various classes in May and June. The former president was also treated with radiation to his brain and had a large tumor on his liver removed.

Carter had been taking a newly-approved cancer drug called Keytruda along with the standard radiation treatment, and will continue to take doses of the drug every three weeks while doctors continue to scan his body for new cancer cells.

“Keytruda blocks the cancer from telling the immune system to go away, by binding those receptors and preventing the cancer from flipping that off-switch”, he said.

But Carter has continued to teach Sunday School classes and participated in at least one Habitat for Humanity home-building event this autumn.

“And when I went this week, they didn’t find any cancer at all”, Carter told the congregation, prompting gasps and applause as he smiled slightly.

It’s unusual, but not unheard of. At that point, his melanoma had spread to his brain and liver. There are certain organs or glands in the immune system that can, in a sense, “turn on” the body and cause inflammation, but most patients don’t have that problem and frankly it sounds like the President has done extremely well on this drug. It nearly always comes back.

Jimmy Carter’s grandson says no cancer was detected the last time the former president underwent a scan.

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration fast-tracked the approval of Kevtruda past year after studies showed it extended the lives of patients with advanced melanoma.

Dr. Antoni Ribas of the University of California Los Angeles led that trial. “When they first published the data, they did not have more than 8 months of follow-up in the patients they were treating”.

Normally, the immune system can recognize things that shouldn’t be there, like a bacteria or virus, Shepard explained.

Kathy Thomas of Torrance, California, was one of them.

“Prior to these immunotherapies, we didn’t have good treatment options for melanoma that was metastatic, that had spread to other organs”, Shepard said. He indicated the gestures “closest to his heart” post-cancer diagnosis came from Plains residents. He started treatment in August. Thomas celebrated her 60th birthday this year by traveling to South America and the Caribbean.

Santiago has filed several measures to help cancer patients in the Philippines.

“The reason is because the immune system has to focus on something that’s different in the melanoma from the normal cells”, said Ribas, who is not familiar with Carter’s case.