The 'Jimmy Carter drug': What is immunotherapy and how does it treat cancer?

The Jimmy Carter drug introduced the world to cancer immunotherapy, a treatment that differs from chemotherapy. Carter was diagnosed with melanoma in 2015.

Former President Jimmy Carter was known globally for his diplomacy and humanitarian work. The world of medicine will remember him not only as a person who beat the cancer that spread in his body, but also as arguably the most influential voice to raise awareness of a cutting-edge cancer treatment: immunotherapy.

Even people who have never heard that term usually know it was “the Jimmy Carter drug” that helped save his life.

Carter’s successful cancer treatment “would have been considered a miracle just 15 to 20 years ago,” said Dr. Adam Friedman, chair of dermatology at George Washington University. “The ‘Carter effect’ spawned a new era of hope for patients who would ordinarily be hopeless.”

In 2015, a person with metastatic melanoma — a form of skin cancer that has spread throughout the body — was unlikely to survive more than six months, and possibly not even six weeks if he or she happened to be 90 years old.

Carter believed that was his fate when he announced in August of that year that melanoma had spread to his liver and his brain.

https://www.nbcnews.com/health/cancer/jimmy-carter-drug-immunotherapy-melanoma-rcna153166

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