'Holy grail' cancer therapy gives terminal patients with same disease as Joe Biden new hope in breakthrough

Daily Mail​

2 days ago

A groundbreaking cancer treatment hailed as a 'holy grail' is offering fresh hope to patients once given just months to live.
A new study in California looked at 15 men who were 'knocking on death's door' due to late-stage prostate cancer like the one suffered by former president Joe Biden.
The therapy involved injecting liquid nitrogen to freeze their tumors, followed by a powerful cocktail of drugs that trigger the immune system to destroy their cancer.
Overall, 53 percent - or eight of the patients - saw all signs of their cancer disappear. Another five saw their tumors shrink dramatically, while two saw their disease stop growing. None saw their cancer progress further.
Doctors involved in the study underlined how sick the patients were, saying 13 had cancers that had spread to their bones and, in every case, their disease had not responded to standard treatments.
In stage four prostate cancer, the median survival rate is just two to three years. Only a third make it to five years. But, in this study, nine in 10 patients are still alive after 14 months.
Dr Jason Williams, the scientist who pioneered the therapy and who was involved in the study, told DailyMail.com in an exclusive interview that he felt the results were 'really impressive' and underlined the effectiveness of the therapy.
He said: 'These results were really good, even in those patients who were metastatic, patients who were heavily treated and failed all other immunotherapies, and basically had nothing left.
'If we got more healthy patients, patients before they were treated, it is likely that our results would be even better. But, of course, the fact our results are already so good says a lot.'
Doctors said their experimental therapy works because it is able to 'harness the immune system', prompting it to hunt out and destroy cancer cells in the body.
For the treatment - known as SYNC-T - doctors initially freeze part of a tumor to kill some of the cells and trigger an immune response.
Then, they inject a cocktail of four immunotherapy drugs into the same tumor to further ramp up the immune system and help it identify and destroy cancer cells.
Scientists said that the treatment helps the immune system to recognize the cancer in other parts of the body, such as the bones, leading it to also destroy tumors in those areas.
The study was revealed at ASCO 2025, the largest cancer conference in the world being held in Chicago, Illinois, and prompted gasps from members of the audience.
One member was quick to call it potentially the 'holy grail' of cancer treatments, while a second simply uttered 'damn' while the results were being revealed.
Joe Biden, 82, revealed last month that he had been diagnosed with an aggressive form of prostate cancer, saying it had already spread to his bones. In comments last week, he told reporters he 'feels good' and expects to 'be able to beat this'.
Dr Williams said his therapy could be offered to patients like Biden.
'We know that they have the information on our trial,' he said, 'so they [Biden's medical team] have seen it, and, hopefully, they can make a decision, because he clearly has advanced prostate cancer, and this is an advanced treatment option.'
In the study, patients were 60 years old on average with an age range from 49 to 74 years. Nine of the patients were White, while five were Hispanic and one was Black.
Ten had previously received hormone therapy to treat their cancer, while five had been refused the therapy. Three, or 20 percent, had done chemotherapy, while five, or 33 percent, had had radiation, and two, or 13 percent, had received immunotherapy.
Each received up to 12 cycles of the therapy which was administered once every four weeks.
Patients also underwent full-body MRI and PET scans every eight weeks, allowing doctors to track the progression of their tumors.
On average, patients had elevated levels of immune cells that fight tumors in their blood within 24 hours of their first cycle of the treatment.
Side effects such as fevers were recorded, which the scientists said was likely been triggered by a surge in immune system activity. There were no major adverse events, however.
In one case, a patient saw all 50 cancerous growths in their bones disappear after receiving the treatment.
The patients in this study had metastatic castration-resistant prostate cancer, meaning their cancer had spread to other areas of the body and hormone therapy was no longer effective in controlling its growth.
Dr Williams has urged other doctors to adopt his method of injecting immunotherapy drugs directly into the tumor instead of systemically, or into the blood stream, as is standard practice.
He added to this website: 'Hopefully, this is going to open people's eyes.
'Doctor's say, you think putting medication in tumors is going to work, and I say, that's like saying if you've got a house on fire, do you think you should put the water on that house or on another one nearby'.
The therapy has also been used to treat other cancers previously, in cases covered by DailyMail.com.
These include a doctor suffering from pancreatic cancer who had been told he had just six months to live, but then cleared his cancer with the therapy. And a mother-of-five given 24 months to live after her stage four breast cancer spread 'everywhere'.
Prostate cancer is the most common cancer among men in the US, with about 236,000 men diagnosed with the disease in the US every year.
Age is the biggest risk factor for the disease, with one in eight men being diagnosed with the disease during their lifetimes. Those aged 70 and over have about a 50:50 risk of developing the disease, studies suggest.