I sit down with Dr Luis Diaz Jr, physican scientist at Memorial Sloan Kettering, and we share some history of mismatch repair, lynch syndrome and the evolution. Of course we talked about the primary rectal cancer study where they showed immunotherapy was curative for MMR/MSI High tumors. A second study for multiple cancer locations had 85% response rate and 40% had no side effects. Shout out of course to Dr Zsofia Stadler, my oncologist, working on another study of patients treated with immunotherapy, and if further cancers can be prevented. The future may be the Lynch Syndrome vaccine, but does the future also include immunotherapy before cancer for lynch syndrome patients? How about trying to turn non-lynch tumors into lynch (like) tumors so they can be treated with immunotherapy? Dr Diaz hopes other researchers can be bold moving forward, and that someday, this is all routine and these stories are no longer news.
