ATLANTA — President Jimmy Carter is now cancer free and he says he has a new cancer drug to thank for it.
The drug is made by Merck and was approved in September 2014 when the company sold $55 million worth in a few months. This year Merck has already sold more than $352 million.
A doctor told Channel 2’s Craig Lucie today that it makes your body’s immune system basically wake up and fight the cancer cells.
“I can’t say that I was surprised,” said Dr. Len Lichtenfeld.
Lichtenfeld may not be surprised, but many were when they heard the words from former President Jimmy Carter stating that his cancer is gone.
Lichtenfeld is the chief medical officer for the American Cancer Society and via Skype he told Lucie the research for the drug Carter received started decades ago.
“It’s technically called a checkpoint inhibitor. It’s one of several drugs available over the past several years that have been effective in treating melanoma by harnessing the body’s own ability to fight the cancer cells to find the cancer cells and destroy them,” said Lichtenfeld.
The drug is called Keytruda, known chemically as pembrolizumab.
Carter told the world he had four spots of melanoma on his brain and Litchenfeld says his doctors gave him the drug to control the disease.
“What Keytruda and similar drugs do is wake up the immune system and allow the immune system to recognize that these cancer cells are not normal and foreign so go after them,” said Lichtenfeld.
Lucie called Merck and they told him they’ve already sold more than $400 million of Keytruda since the FDA approved it in 2014. A representative said “while advanced Melanoma has historically been considered difficult-to-treat, recently there have been several advances that have been restoring hope for patients with this devastating disease as well as their physicians.”
“What’s interesting is they are not only effective in treating Melanoma, they have turned out to be effective for other cancers and recently been approved in treatment in lung, stomach, neck and other cancers,” said Lichtenfeld.
WSBTV
