A newly disclosed cancer study had "unprecedented" and "unheard-of" results, and now all eyes are on dostarlimab, the GlaxoSmithKline drug used to achieve complete remission in the trial.
Who Makes Dostarlimab?
Developed by a biotech company out of Massachusetts called Tesaro before being acquired by GlaxoSmithKline in 2019, dostarlimab is also known by the brand name Jemparli.
First approved in the United States for use as a cancer treatment in early 2021, dostarlimab is a monoclonal antibody.
What Are Monoclonal Antibodies?
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Monoclonal antibodies like dostarlimab are laboratory-made antibodies design to fight specific illnesses.
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The term became more widely known in the last two years as a variety of monoclonal antibodies came out to treat COVID-19.
Dostarlimab is specifically designed to block a particular protein involved in cancer cells called PD-1.
In the Memorial Sloan Kettering trial with rectal cancer, all of the patients' tumors also had a feature known as mismatch repair deficiency.
What Is Mismatch Repair Deficiency?
Cells that have mutations that keep them from fixing mistakes when DNA is copied are said to have "mismatch repair deficiency."
Having mismatch repair deficiency can be associated with cells becoming cancerous.
