New Cancer Drug Keytruda In Spotlight After Jimmy Carter Announcement

A new cancer drug -- Keytruda -- that former President Jimmy Carter credits for shrinking his brain tumors completely, is one of the newest class of cancer drugs that allow the immune system to fight off cancer tumors.

Former President Jimmy Carter said he is cancer free thanks in part to the use of a new cancer drug called Keytruda.
Photo Credit: *File photo*

K Reakes

12/09/2015 9:30 a.m.

But cancer experts say that it's not clear that it was the just the drug that shrank Carter's tumors because he was also treated with radiation to his brain, and had a tumor on his liver removed, NBC News reports..

Keytruda is the first cancer drug to take a different approach, known generically as pembrolizumab, the drug targets the activity of two genes and the interaction between them allows some tumors to escape detection and lets the immune cells do their work by eating the tumor cells, said NBC News.

The Food and Drug Administration gave Keytruda accelerated approval in 2014 for patients whose melanoma has spread on the basis of a large study that showed the drug could shrink the tumors of about a third of patients by as much as 90 percent, NBC News reported.

Click here to read the Daily Voice story when Carter announced his cancer.

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