An experimental cancer drug appears to have cured every single patient in a small clinical trial conducted in the US. The 12 patients, all of whom had been diagnosed with rectal cancer, entered remission after taking dostarlimab over a six-month period, according to a study published in The New England Journal of Medicine.

The trial, albeit small in scale, has brought hopes that cancer can be removed completely without going through long and painful chemotherapy sessions or surgeries. According to The New York Times, the drug dostarlimab was administered to 12 rectal cancer patients, who seemed to have recovered completely as the disease could not be detected by physical exam, endoscopy, positron emission tomography (PET) or magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) scans.

Experts stated that the malignancy is undetectable by physical examination, endoscopy, positron emission tomography or PET scans, or MRI scans. This shows that Dostarlimab has the potential to be a 'possible' cancer cure for one of the most lethal tumours.

This is "the first time this has happened in the history of cancer," according to Dr. Luis A. Diaz J. of Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center in New York. Dostarlimab is a medicine made in a lab that functions as a surrogate for antibodies in the human body, according to specialists.The patients were administered dostarlimab every three weeks for six months. The medication aimed to unmask cancer cells, allowing the body’s immune system to identify and destroy them naturally.