Free Republic

A customized Moderna Inc. vaccine combined with a Merck & Co. cancer drug helped ward off the recurrence of the skin cancer melanoma after surgery in patients in a mid-stage clinical trial, the companies said. The companies said Tuesday the combination of Moderna’s personalized cancer vaccine and Merck’s Keytruda cancer immunotherapy reduced patients’ risk of relapse or death by about 44%, versus Keytruda alone, in the 150-volunteer study. The results, which the companies said were statistically significant but haven’t been reviewed by independent scientists, suggest promise for an emerging but unproven class of vaccines that aim to treat diseases rather...

Former president Jimmy Carter announced Sunday that he’s stopping treatment for his brain cancer at the ripe age of 91. Inspiring as his story is, it’s hard not to wonder: how’d he do it? Turns out Carter was being treated with Keytruda, a new and highly promising immunotherapy drug that was approved not long after Carter was diagnosed. In August 2015, Carter announced that his aggressive melanoma — a deadly form of skin cancer — had spread to his brain, and it seemed pretty clear that he had only a few weeks left to live. Still, he underwent treatment at...

Hamas-loving former US President Jimmy Carter is now cancer free thanks to a cancer drug developed by a joint US-Israeli team. This is from the first link. Carter announced in August that he had been diagnosed with melanoma that had spread to his brain and laid out a treatment plan, including a round of targeted radiation at the brain tumors and doses of an immune-boosting drug every three weeks. Keytruda, the drug, was approved not long before Carter's announcement and helps his body seek out and destroy cancer cells. Carter's spokeswoman Deanna Congileo said in an email that Carter...

Jimmy Carter announced Sunday that he no longer needs treatment for cancer, less than seven months after revealing he had been diagnosed with melanoma that spread to his brain. […] Carter’s spokeswoman Deanna Congileo said in an email that his doctors will continue to perform scans to ensure cancer cells have not returned, and Carter will “resume treatment if necessary.” A spokesman for Emory University’s Winship Cancer Institute, where Carter has been treated, declined to comment on Sunday, citing patient privacy. Carter’s treatment plan for the aggressive form of cancer including a round of targeted radiation at several tumors on...