Latest news with #Jayce
Yahoo
7 days ago
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
Their 5-Year-Old Is Starting Kindergarten. They Started a Video Tradition to Mark the Major Milestone (Exclusive)
Kourtney Marsh and her husband are celebrating their oldest child, Jayce, starting kindergarten NEED TO KNOW Kourtney Marsh and her husband, Kay, prepared to send their oldest child, Jayce, off to kindergarten Leading up to his first day, the Atlanta-based parents knew they wanted to mark the milestone in a meaningful way After brainstorming, they came up with an idea: interview Jayce, 5, about his thoughts and feelings before school began each year As Kourtney Marsh and her husband, Kay, prepared to send their oldest child, Jayce, off to his first day of kindergarten, they knew they wanted to mark the milestone in a meaningful way. In the weeks leading up to the big day, they came up with an idea: interview Jayce, 5, about his thoughts and feelings before school began, creating a simple setup they could repeat every year. It would be a way to capture the moment in real time — his words, his personality, his excitement and watch how he grows and changes over time. "He's the perfect mix of curious and chatty," Kourtney, 31, tells PEOPLE exclusively. "He loves exploring new ideas, asking a million questions and sharing every little thought that pops into his head." Using her background as a kindergarten teacher, Kourtney chose questions she knew would spark genuine, age-appropriate answers. She says she wanted prompts that were simple enough for Jayce to understand, yet open enough for his personality and little quirks to shine through. On the morning of his first day, they set up a camera, hung a 'First Day of Kindergarten' banner, and started recording. "Kindergarten is such a huge milestone, and we wanted to make sure it felt celebrated from the very first moment at home," the parents share. "We know he's going to do a great job this year, and we can't wait to watch him learn, grow and shine in this new chapter." As Kourtney and Kay, 32, — who are also parents to 2-year-old daughter Jayla — asked Jayce the questions, they sat back and took it all in, smiling at his answers. They admit they were a little surprised at how thoughtful some of his responses were. For instance, when asked about his favorite thing to learn, Jayce said, 'Ancient Egypt and King Tut.' "We had no clue he enjoyed learning about history that much," Kourtney says. After filming the interview, Kourtney says she and Kay have rewatched it countless times and feel that somehow, it gets better every time. "Watching him walk into school for the first time and then looking back at that video just makes me realize how quickly he's growing," she says. Eventually, the Atlanta-based couple, who share their lives on social media, posted the sweet moment on TikTok. Since then, the video has gone viral, amassing over 240,000 views and hundreds of comments. "Hey so this made me sob 😭 my 5 yr old boy is going into kindergarten too. I can't believe that it's already here 😭" one user wrote. "May he always have that infectious joy 🥺💛 have a great year Jayce!," someone else commented. Another person replied, "I love this! Saved to write down the questions for my kiddos!" The couple hopes that by sharing it, they will inspire other parents to capture the little moments — the ones that become the most treasured memories. "There's no right or wrong way to do it, so I would encourage you to just be present, hit record and let your child be their natural, expressive self, no matter what that looks like," they say. "Years from now, you'll be so glad you did!!" Never miss a story — sign up for to stay up-to-date on the best of what PEOPLE has to offer, from celebrity news to compelling human interest stories. Looking toward the future, the parents plan to continue this tradition until Jayce is a senior in high school. They hope through capturing these moments on camera, he can look back and see just how loved and supported he's always been. "Moments like this make you realize just how quickly time moves," Kourtney says. "One day you're helping them take their first steps, and the next you're watching them walk into school with their backpack on. This experience has been a reminder to slow down, be present and soak in every stage because it all goes by so fast." "We're a very transparent and authentic family, and we've always shared major milestones with our audience," Kourtney adds. "Back to school is such a big deal for parents, and we wanted to share our experience firsthand of what it was like for us. We realized the video was going viral when we started getting tagged in other parents' videos doing the same thing and mentioning us. It was such a full-circle and touching moment seeing all the positive feedback from others." Read the original article on People Solve the daily Crossword
GMA Network
10-08-2025
- Entertainment
- GMA Network
'The Clash': Jayce San Rafael still feels like a winner thanks to family's support
Jayce San Rafael is exiting the 'The Clash' a lot more sure about himself. The Las Pinas-based singer is the latest hopeful to get eliminated from the reality talent search. In an interview with GMA News Online, Jayce said that in joining 'The Clash,' he wanted to prove something to his family. His older siblings are the Tukomi Brothers, vloggers who went viral for their prank videos, and this became his source of motivation in the competition. 'Biggest achievement would be finally, makuha ko 'yung support and appreciation ng family ko,' Jayce told GMA News Online. 'Feeling ko talaga ako 'yung weakest link, ako 'yung loser sa 'min eh. Kasi tatlo kaming magkakapatid, kambal sila. Feeling ko hindi ako na-a-appreciate, feeling ko walang suporta sa 'kin 'yung family ko,' he added. Jayce said that he now sees his family's love and support towards him. 'Win or lose, whatever happens in the competition, maging successful man o hindi—ang success ko 'yung pamilya ko na babalikan,' he said. 'Alam kong may nagmamahal sa 'king pamilya at susuportahan ako all the way.' 'Panalo na 'ko na nararamdaman ko 'yung family support eh,' he added. 'Matalo man ako, feel ko panalo na ako eh. Matanggal man ako ngayon po, happy ako na uuwi ako sa bahay na masaya.' And despite the results of the show, Jayce remains determined and keeps his heart in music. 'Basta ako, pursue ko talaga 'yung music whatever happens.' 'Magsusulat ako, magpo-produce ako for myself and for other artists.' Should he go back to his day job or regular days, 'Alam ko sa sarili ko na may nagawa ako for my music. Nakasali ako sa national singing competition, naharap ko 'yung fears ko na ma-TV.' In a previous interview, Jayce likened his 'The Clash' journey to the song 'The Winner Takes It All' by ABBA because 'matira matibay talaga.' He added there are a lot of challenges, twists, and turns in the competition and so, 'Kung sino man mananalo, you deserve it.' 'The Clash' airs at 7:15 p.m. on Sundays on GMA Network. —JCB, GMA Integrated News
Yahoo
06-08-2025
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
'Feral' COVID babies are entering kindergarten. How scared should schools be?
Parents are warning teachers about their own kids — but not for the reasons experts expected. Kourtney Marsh's first son, Jayce, was born in January 2020. Then the world shut down. As if there weren't enough to worry about as a first-time mom, the first year of Marsh's son's life was also the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, with lockdowns, mask mandates and more. When COVID case numbers would fall in their hometown of Atlanta, Marsh would enroll Jayce in day care, hoping to give him some semblance of normal socialization. But then infection rates would shoot up again, day care facilities would close down and Jayce would be back home with her. Marsh worried that her son would be shy or struggle socially because he'd had so little interaction with other kids amid the pandemic. But by the time he turned 3, restrictions were lifted and Jayce was able to spend some time in an early preschool. 'It was like this is what he's been waiting for,' Marsh tells Yahoo. 'He's an extrovert, he loves to run wild, and I'm noticing that's a commonality between all the COVID babies.' Other parents of COVID babies, born in 2020, have noticed 'wild' tendencies too. Some have gone as far as calling their kids — their own kids! — feral. Others describe them as bossy or fearlessly independent. One viral meme depicted the incoming kindergarten class as a gaggle of ghastly characters: Pennywise, Jason, Freddy Kreuger, the Scream. Marsh herself re-shared the post on TikTok. 'I think it's gonna be a rough year for kindergarten teachers,' says Marsh, a former kindergarten teacher herself. 'These kids are more than just talkative or extroverted — they have all this energy bouncing around.' Jayce's first day of kindergarten was Aug. 4, 2025. 'He was like, 'I'm gonna be fine, Mom,' and he hopped out of that car and he did not look back,' says Marsh. 'All these kids just live with no regrets.' As these COVID babies enter a structured classroom for the first time, some parents are warning teachers to brace themselves — but are their kids really so different? Here's what we learned. The concern for COVID babies There were a few potential concerns. Masks and lockdowns might mean that babies born in the first year of the pandemic wouldn't see as many people and full faces, hampering their psychological development and ability to learn social cues. Plus, mothers' pandemic-related stress during pregnancy could affect the developing fetus, and infection with the novel coronavirus could potentially harm the baby in the womb. Dr. Sarah Mulkey, a prenatal and neonatal neurologist at Children's National Hospital in Washington, D.C., researches both closely. 'For the most part, we're seeing that some studies show mild developmental delays … and some studies showing there's really no difference between these kids and other kids,' Mulkey tells Yahoo. Babies born at the height of the pandemic seem to have dodged the worst possible outcomes, but that doesn't mean there were no effects. Mulkey estimates that some 20% of the children born to mothers who had COVID during pregnancy showed some degree of developmental delays in their fine motor or language skills by ages 2 or 3. 'We may expect that they would be a little more shy, have a little more difficulty making friends at first and may not be as strong in their communication skills as other children,' she adds. But overall, the effects seem to be pretty mild. As for their potential to be little terrors in the kindergarten classroom? 'The short answer is that, while that's really funny, there's not really a lot of scientific basis for [the notion that] there's a generation of feral children headed to kindergarten,' Sara Johnson, a professor of pediatrics at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, tells Yahoo. Like Mulkey, Johnson has been following children born during the pandemic and has been relieved to find only some mild developmental delays. 'This generation, in some way, has had the longest time from when they were exposed to the pandemic to self-right or get back on track,' she explains. Babies born in 2020 have had relatively normal toddler years. That might actually give them an advantage compared with older kids who were pulled from classrooms and had to adjust to Zoom school, then return to pre-pandemic life. With those children, experts have seen 'more challenges with behavior and social and emotional regulation,' Johnson says. Wild, bossy extroverts: What's behind an unexpected personality trend? As Johnson said, there hasn't been a large study of today's 5-year-olds to establish that they are indeed more independent and outgoing; it's just something that families have observed in their own kids and discussed on social media. Still, 'I don't doubt the parents' observations,' Johnson says. It's just hard to pinpoint the why and get rid of other variables. Parents who could work from home during the pandemic may just have had more time to closely watch their kids. It could also have to do with birth order. 'But there could be something to it,' says Johnson. 'It could be that all the time at home with caregivers and siblings might enrich their vocabulary' and lead to more confidence and extroversion, she adds. 'It would be great if parents were right, and this is a generation of kids that are just ready to get it done — I would love that.' That's what Marsh thinks, and she has her own theories about why — and what problems still lie ahead for the incoming class of kindergartners and their teachers. Her son doesn't remember his first years at home with his mother, but she does. For the first two years of Jayce's life, Marsh was working from home, like so many other parents. If she was busy and he was whining for something, she often had to just give in to preserve her focus. 'You take all these parents just trying to survive and just putting a Band-Aid over whatever the problem there is, and then you put all that in a classroom — you got trouble on your hands,' Marsh says. She suspects that her son and other kids his age 'just live with no regrets' in part because they've been 'sheltered, because parents will give more grace than teachers will.' Marsh isn't worried about her son making friends at school. She says Jayce is more than ready to break out of his COVID bubble and was already deemed an 'extrovert' by his pre-kindergarten teacher (and that doesn't seem to be simply a product of growing up in the Marsh family; Jayce's 2-year-old sister is shy). Marsh is just mildly concerned about Jayce's willingness to sit still, listen and share. 'He's a little territorial,' Marsh says. At home, she's been reading Jayce books like The Rainbow Fish to teach him about kindness and sharing and recommends other parents worried their COVID kids are too used to ruling the roost to do the same. 'When it comes to sharing and things like that that you would learn in a public classroom setting, I feel like our COVID babies lack that,' she says. 'So I'm about to go ahead and clear off his kindergarten teacher's wish list so I can get on her good side,' Marsh jokes. As for Jayce, he was raring to go to kindergarten even before his first day. 'He was really excited, not nervous at all, just bubbly and ready to go to school,' Marsh says. At his kindergarten's open house, Jayce told his mother, 'You can leave me here and come back tomorrow,' she says. 'He's just ready to explore.' Solve the daily Crossword
CNN
05-05-2025
- Health
- CNN
Immunotherapy helps certain cancer patients avoid surgery, other invasive treatments: ‘We hope this is the future'
Source: CNN Kelly Spill didn't cry when she was diagnosed with stage III rectal cancer at age 28. She held her emotions together when her surgeon told her that she might not be able to carry another baby — treatment with radiation can significantly affect fertility — and that she might need to have a colostomy bag attached to her to collect her bodily waste after surgery. 'I didn't cry at both of those,' said Spill, who at the time was newly engaged and just months postpartum. 'But then I asked [the doctor], 'Would I still be able to go to Switzerland this summer to get married?' And he was like, 'Oh, absolutely not.' And that's what really broke me,' she said. 'It really hit reality for me that my life has now completely changed.' After welcoming son Jayce into the world, she and her fiancé had planned to elope to Switzerland. But after her cancer diagnosis, they opted for a quick, local winter wedding instead. Now, five years later, not only has Spill carried another baby – giving Jayce a younger sister named Mya – she and her husband are expecting their third child together. Spill, who has no family history of colorectal cancer, was among more than 100 adults in the United States who completed cancer treatment in a new study using only the immunotherapy drug dostarlimab, and she said the experience changed her life. When Spill was diagnosed in 2020, her treatment plan recommended harsh chemotherapy drugs, radiation therapy and invasive surgery. But just before she was about to schedule her first chemotherapy appointment, she was given the opportunity to participate in the new study. When she realized that the approach using only dostarlimab would be less harsh on her body, she quickly signed up. Immunotherapy is a form of cancer treatment that harnesses a person's own immune system to target and fight the disease. Dostarlimab, developed by the pharmaceutical company GSK and sold under the brand name Jemperli, has been found in previous research to make solid tumors essentially disappear among people with rectal cancer. Last year, the US Food and Drug Administration designated dostarlimab to be a 'breakthrough therapy' for the treatment of certain rectal cancers. But the new study, published last week in the New England Journal of Medicine, found that the immunotherapy treatment worked against not only advanced rectal cancer but other cancer types too, allowing patients to avoid surgery and other types of more invasive treatment to cure their disease. Spill received 30-minute intravenous infusions of dostarlimab at a medical facility every three weeks and said she had no adverse side effects. 'It took four treatments until I found out that the tumor was halfway gone, and then by my ninth treatment, the tumor had completely disappeared. And I was then told I was cancer-free at that point,' Spill said. 'I then was told I did not have to go through radiation, I did not have to go through surgery, and that was like one of the best days of my life, because I knew that I can then proceed with having a baby,' she said. 'This clinical trial has completely changed what my life could have looked like … and it's like a miracle.' The new study included 117 cancer patients who were separated into two groups. One cohort included people with advanced rectal cancer, and the other included people with other types of solid tumors, such as colon, gastric, bladder and prostate. All of the participants had mismatch repair-deficient or dMMR cancer, meaning their tumor cells were mismatch repair-deficient cells. These types of cells usually have many DNA mutations and are estimated to affect up to 3% of all early-stage solid tumors, according to the study. 'We constantly wind up with breakdown in our cells, and using DNA, we can repair this ongoing injury to cells over time,' said Dr. William Dahut, chief scientific officer for the American Cancer Society, who was not involved in the new research. 'But if you have a deficit in that repair process, then you wind up with a greater number of abnormalities in DNA, which we call mutations. And we know people that have a greater number of mutations often have a greater ability to respond to immune-based treatment.' That ability to respond to immune-based treatment was shown in the new study. The data was obtained from December 2019 through April 2025, and 103 of the participants completed treatment across both cohorts. They received intravenous infusions of dostarlimab for six months and were monitored through two years, part of a continuation of previous research. 'The first study we published in 2022 showed that we could do this in rectal cancer patients whose tumors had the mismatch repair-deficiency mutation, and what was remarkable there was that 100% of patients had their tumors disappear – and that's something that's never been achieved before in oncology,' said Dr. Luis Diaz, a head of solid tumor oncology and gastrointestinal medical oncologist at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center and an author of the new study. Now, 'what we just published shows two things. Those rectal cancer patients remain at 100%, at almost 50 patients responding completely, but it's durable. Durable is important because the tumor has remained gone for up to five years or beyond for some patients, and that's returned them to normal life,' Diaz said. 'The second part of the story is, it's not just for rectal cancer,' he added. 'It's for any cancer in the body, as long as their tumor has the genetic mutation.' The researchers found that 80% of the study participants who completed treatment with dostarlimab immunotherapy alone did not require surgery, radiation or chemotherapy after six months of treatment. The findings were presented at the 2025 American Association of Cancer Research's annual meeting. 'In all the patients who had a clinical complete response, organs were preserved without additional therapy. Three patients who had rectal cancer were subsequently able to conceive and deliver healthy children, which would not have been possible with standard treatment for rectal cancer,' the researchers wrote in the study. Two years later, about 92% of all the patients across both cohorts had not had their cancer come back. Disease recurrence developed in only five patients across both cohorts: One person with rectal cancer saw their tumor regrow, and the other four had recurrence only in the lymph nodes. Although 65% of the people who received at least one dose of dostarlimab reported adverse events, most of the side effects were mild and included fatigue, rash or irritation at the infusion site or itching. None of the participants in either cohort died during the study. 'It's been incredible for the patients, because we're effectively able to eliminate their disease with very minimal toxicity,' said Dr. Andrea Cercek, a gastrointestinal medical oncologist at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center and an author of the new study. 'Our goal always in oncology is to cure, but often, many of our cures leave patients debilitated in certain ways,' she said. 'What we've seen here with this treatment is that we could omit standard of care – radiation, chemotherapy and, most importantly, surgery – in 80% of the patients with minimal toxicity, which leaves them feeling well with their organs intact, and they're living as normal lives as possible.' The researchers wrote that although these findings are encouraging, 'larger studies are needed to confirm the long-term benefit of this treatment, especially among patients with nonrectal tumors.' But the new study 'provides a foundation' for these next steps. Chemotherapy, radiation and surgery are usually the main components of treatment plans for most types of cancer, and these approaches have been widely used for decades. For instance, the first radical mastectomy to treat breast cancer was performed in 1882. The first use of radiation therapy to cure cancer was described in 1899. In the 1950s, scientists announced the first complete cure of a human solid tumor by chemotherapy. But in more recent years, there has been a 'growing body of evidence' showing that immunotherapy can be effective in people who have mismatch repair-deficient tumors, said Dr. Stacey Cohen, a physician at the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Center in Seattle, who was not involved in the new study. 'It's extremely innovative, because historically, we have thought of surgery as being the mainstay for localized cancer treatment, and any other adjunctive therapies are to decrease risk of recurrence. So as we move to an age where nonoperative management could be a new standard of care with durable and effective treatments, that's very exciting for patients and providers alike,' Cohen said. 'But we know that not all patients will have such an amazing response, even if they have the correct biomarker,' she said. 'And that's just because there may be nuances of people's tumors and the fact that one treatment doesn't fit all.' Cohen added that she has 'two points of caution' when it comes to the new study results. 'One is that the immunotherapy did not work for every patient on this study,' she noted. Second, 'this only applies for a highly select group of patients with dMMR/MSI tumors. It is critical that this biomarker be checked before immunotherapy is considered, as this type of treatment will not work for most patients.' It's important for cancer patients to have their tumors genetically sequenced because the process can help guide treatment decisions by determining which specific mutations may be driving the cancer, Dahut said. Once those mutations are identified, patients can learn whether any new and emerging immunotherapies may benefit them by targeting those mutations. 'That's one reason why patients should have their tumors sequenced at diagnosis, because this is not something that you necessarily would know that you had, but if you do have this, then your treatment – even for initial diagnosis or for recurrent disease or advanced disease – would have significantly more options available,' Dahut said. With immune-based therapies, 'what is striking is not only we're seeing complete responses, but that the responses appear to be durable,' he added. The new research comes as colorectal cancer cases have been rising among younger adults. A report released in 2023 by the American Cancer Society shows that the proportion of colorectal cancer cases among adults younger than 55 increased from 11% in 1995 to 20% in 2019. When Cercek and her colleagues started the new study, she said, their goal was to find less-invasive treatment options for these younger people with colorectal cancer. 'One of our reasons behind the design of this trial is that we were seeing so many young patients in clinic and seeing how detrimental our treatment could be. So that was driving my research for a long time. Even before this study of immunotherapy in mismatch repair-deficient tumors, we were trying to improve treatment of early-stage disease for all our patients but especially for our young adults,' Cercek said. 'We hope this is the future. I think this sets the precedent of what we can accomplish with very effective systemic therapy,' she said. 'And there are other studies now ongoing, utilizing immunotherapy as well as other therapies, with hopefully replicating similar results, where we can just treat the tumor very well with a systemic treatment and not need to put patients through radiation or surgery.' Spill said she hopes other young adults with rectal cancer ask their providers about clinical trials that may benefit them – especially as cancer treatments evolve and advance to become less invasive. 'A lot of us think of clinical trials being the last resort, and I think we need to kill that stigma, because it really shouldn't be. You never know what could work for you,' Spill said. 'There is a rise in colorectal cancer for men and women at a young age. And fertility doesn't only affect the women, it also affects men, too,' she said. 'At a young age, getting diagnosed with a cancer that we thought you only really get when you get older, it's scary.' Signs and symptoms of colorectal cancer may include changes in bowel habits, rectal bleeding or blood in the stool, cramping or abdominal pain, weakness and fatigue, and weight loss. But Spill warned that often these symptoms may be overlooked or mistaken for other health conditions in young adults. Her own symptoms included constipation, bloody stool and abdominal pain, but because they emerged after she had her first child, her doctors told her they were tied to being postpartum and internal hemorrhoids. 'One day I went to the bathroom and I looked down, and you would have thought it was my time of the month, and it most certainly was not. That's when it became extremely alarming,' Spill said of the blood in her stool. When she noticed massive amounts of blood again, she took photos and showed them to a primary care physician. The doctor immediately ordered a colonoscopy, and that's what led to her cancer diagnosis. 'To self-advocate is such a big one,' Spill said. 'If I didn't push, push, push, I don't know where I would be, and especially as a new mom.' When Spill now thinks about her 28-year-old self, the woman who broke down in the doctor's office after being told to cancel her Switzerland elopement plans, she has one message: 'Take a deep breath and trust the timing.' See Full Web Article
Yahoo
05-05-2025
- Health
- Yahoo
Immunotherapy helps certain cancer patients avoid surgery: ‘We hope this is the future'
Kelly Spill didn't cry when she was diagnosed with stage III rectal cancer at age 28. She held her emotions together when her surgeon told her that she might not be able to carry another baby — treatment with radiation can significantly affect fertility — and that she might need to have a colostomy bag attached to her to collect her bodily waste after surgery. 'I didn't cry at both of those,' said Spill, who at the time was newly engaged and just months postpartum. 'But then I asked [the doctor], 'Would I still be able to go to Switzerland this summer to get married?' And he was like, 'Oh, absolutely not.' And that's what really broke me,' she said. 'It really hit reality for me that my life has now completely changed.' After welcoming son Jayce into the world, she and her fiancé had planned to elope to Switzerland. But after her cancer diagnosis, they opted for a quick, local winter wedding instead. Now, five years later, not only has Spill carried another baby – giving Jayce a younger sister named Mya – she and her husband are expecting their third child together. Spill, who has no family history of colorectal cancer, was among more than 100 adults in the United States who completed cancer treatment in a new study using only the immunotherapy drug dostarlimab, and she said the experience changed her life. When Spill was diagnosed in 2020, her treatment plan recommended harsh chemotherapy drugs, radiation therapy and invasive surgery. But just before she was about to schedule her first chemotherapy appointment, she was given the opportunity to participate in the new study. When she realized that the approach using only dostarlimab would be less harsh on her body, she quickly signed up. Immunotherapy is a form of cancer treatment that harnesses a person's own immune system to target and fight the disease. Dostarlimab, developed by the pharmaceutical company GSK and sold under the brand name Jemperli, has been found in previous research to make solid tumors essentially disappear among people with rectal cancer. Last year, the US Food and Drug Administration designated dostarlimab to be a 'breakthrough therapy' for the treatment of certain rectal cancers. But the new study, published last week in the New England Journal of Medicine, found that the immunotherapy treatment worked against not only advanced rectal cancer but other cancer types too, allowing patients to avoid surgery and other types of more invasive treatment to cure their disease. Spill received 30-minute intravenous infusions of dostarlimab at a medical facility every three weeks and said she had no adverse side effects. 'It took four treatments until I found out that the tumor was halfway gone, and then by my ninth treatment, the tumor had completely disappeared. And I was then told I was cancer-free at that point,' Spill said. 'I then was told I did not have to go through radiation, I did not have to go through surgery, and that was like one of the best days of my life, because I knew that I can then proceed with having a baby,' she said. 'This clinical trial has completely changed what my life could have looked like … and it's like a miracle.' The new study included 117 cancer patients who were separated into two groups. One cohort included people with advanced rectal cancer, and the other included people with other types of solid tumors, such as colon, gastric, bladder and prostate. All of the participants had mismatch repair-deficient or dMMR cancer, meaning their tumor cells were mismatch repair-deficient cells. These types of cells usually have many DNA mutations and are estimated to affect up to 3% of all early-stage solid tumors, according to the study. 'We constantly wind up with breakdown in our cells, and using DNA, we can repair this ongoing injury to cells over time,' said Dr. William Dahut, chief scientific officer for the American Cancer Society, who was not involved in the new research. 'But if you have a deficit in that repair process, then you wind up with a greater number of abnormalities in DNA, which we call mutations. And we know people that have a greater number of mutations often have a greater ability to respond to immune-based treatment.' That ability to respond to immune-based treatment was shown in the new study. The data was obtained from December 2019 through April 2025, and 103 of the participants completed treatment across both cohorts. They received intravenous infusions of dostarlimab for six months and were monitored through two years, part of a continuation of previous research. 'The first study we published in 2022 showed that we could do this in rectal cancer patients whose tumors had the mismatch repair-deficiency mutation, and what was remarkable there was that 100% of patients had their tumors disappear – and that's something that's never been achieved before in oncology,' said Dr. Luis Diaz, a head of solid tumor oncology and gastrointestinal medical oncologist at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center and an author of the new study. Now, 'what we just published shows two things. Those rectal cancer patients remain at 100%, at almost 50 patients responding completely, but it's durable. Durable is important because the tumor has remained gone for up to five years or beyond for some patients, and that's returned them to normal life,' Diaz said. 'The second part of the story is, it's not just for rectal cancer,' he added. 'It's for any cancer in the body, as long as their tumor has the genetic mutation.' The researchers found that 80% of the study participants who completed treatment with dostarlimab immunotherapy alone did not require surgery, radiation or chemotherapy after six months of treatment. The findings were presented at the 2025 American Association of Cancer Research's annual meeting. 'In all the patients who had a clinical complete response, organs were preserved without additional therapy. Three patients who had rectal cancer were subsequently able to conceive and deliver healthy children, which would not have been possible with standard treatment for rectal cancer,' the researchers wrote in the study. Two years later, about 92% of all the patients across both cohorts had not had their cancer come back. Disease recurrence developed in only five patients across both cohorts: One person with rectal cancer saw their tumor regrow, and the other four had recurrence only in the lymph nodes. Although 65% of the people who received at least one dose of dostarlimab reported adverse events, most of the side effects were mild and included fatigue, rash or irritation at the infusion site or itching. None of the participants in either cohort died during the study. 'It's been incredible for the patients, because we're effectively able to eliminate their disease with very minimal toxicity,' said Dr. Andrea Cercek, a gastrointestinal medical oncologist at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center and an author of the new study. 'Our goal always in oncology is to cure, but often, many of our cures leave patients debilitated in certain ways,' she said. 'What we've seen here with this treatment is that we could omit standard of care – radiation, chemotherapy and, most importantly, surgery – in 80% of the patients with minimal toxicity, which leaves them feeling well with their organs intact, and they're living as normal lives as possible.' The researchers wrote that although these findings are encouraging, 'larger studies are needed to confirm the long-term benefit of this treatment, especially among patients with nonrectal tumors.' But the new study 'provides a foundation' for these next steps. Chemotherapy, radiation and surgery are usually the main components of treatment plans for most types of cancer, and these approaches have been widely used for decades. For instance, the first radical mastectomy to treat breast cancer was performed in 1882. The first use of radiation therapy to cure cancer was described in 1899. In the 1950s, scientists announced the first complete cure of a human solid tumor by chemotherapy. But in more recent years, there has been a 'growing body of evidence' showing that immunotherapy can be effective in people who have mismatch repair-deficient tumors, said Dr. Stacey Cohen, a physician at the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Center in Seattle, who was not involved in the new study. 'It's extremely innovative, because historically, we have thought of surgery as being the mainstay for localized cancer treatment, and any other adjunctive therapies are to decrease risk of recurrence. So as we move to an age where nonoperative management could be a new standard of care with durable and effective treatments, that's very exciting for patients and providers alike,' Cohen said. 'But we know that not all patients will have such an amazing response, even if they have the correct biomarker,' she said. 'And that's just because there may be nuances of people's tumors and the fact that one treatment doesn't fit all.' Cohen added that she has 'two points of caution' when it comes to the new study results. 'One is that the immunotherapy did not work for every patient on this study,' she noted. Second, 'this only applies for a highly select group of patients with dMMR/MSI tumors. It is critical that this biomarker be checked before immunotherapy is considered, as this type of treatment will not work for most patients.' It's important for cancer patients to have their tumors genetically sequenced because the process can help guide treatment decisions by determining which specific mutations may be driving the cancer, Dahut said. Once those mutations are identified, patients can learn whether any new and emerging immunotherapies may benefit them by targeting those mutations. 'That's one reason why patients should have their tumors sequenced at diagnosis, because this is not something that you necessarily would know that you had, but if you do have this, then your treatment – even for initial diagnosis or for recurrent disease or advanced disease – would have significantly more options available,' Dahut said. With immune-based therapies, 'what is striking is not only we're seeing complete responses, but that the responses appear to be durable,' he added. The new research comes as colorectal cancer cases have been rising among younger adults. A report released in 2023 by the American Cancer Society shows that the proportion of colorectal cancer cases among adults younger than 55 increased from 11% in 1995 to 20% in 2019. When Cercek and her colleagues started the new study, she said, their goal was to find less-invasive treatment options for these younger people with colorectal cancer. 'One of our reasons behind the design of this trial is that we were seeing so many young patients in clinic and seeing how detrimental our treatment could be. So that was driving my research for a long time. Even before this study of immunotherapy in mismatch repair-deficient tumors, we were trying to improve treatment of early-stage disease for all our patients but especially for our young adults,' Cercek said. 'We hope this is the future. I think this sets the precedent of what we can accomplish with very effective systemic therapy,' she said. 'And there are other studies now ongoing, utilizing immunotherapy as well as other therapies, with hopefully replicating similar results, where we can just treat the tumor very well with a systemic treatment and not need to put patients through radiation or surgery.' Spill said she hopes other young adults with rectal cancer ask their providers about clinical trials that may benefit them – especially as cancer treatments evolve and advance to become less invasive. 'A lot of us think of clinical trials being the last resort, and I think we need to kill that stigma, because it really shouldn't be. You never know what could work for you,' Spill said. 'There is a rise in colorectal cancer for men and women at a young age. And fertility doesn't only affect the women, it also affects men, too,' she said. 'At a young age, getting diagnosed with a cancer that we thought you only really get when you get older, it's scary.' Signs and symptoms of colorectal cancer may include changes in bowel habits, rectal bleeding or blood in the stool, cramping or abdominal pain, weakness and fatigue, and weight loss. But Spill warned that often these symptoms may be overlooked or mistaken for other health conditions in young adults. Her own symptoms included constipation, bloody stool and abdominal pain, but because they emerged after she had her first child, her doctors told her they were tied to being postpartum and internal hemorrhoids. 'One day I went to the bathroom and I looked down, and you would have thought it was my time of the month, and it most certainly was not. That's when it became extremely alarming,' Spill said of the blood in her stool. When she noticed massive amounts of blood again, she took photos and showed them to a primary care physician. The doctor immediately ordered a colonoscopy, and that's what led to her cancer diagnosis. 'To self-advocate is such a big one,' Spill said. 'If I didn't push, push, push, I don't know where I would be, and especially as a new mom.' When Spill now thinks about her 28-year-old self, the woman who broke down in the doctor's office after being told to cancel her Switzerland elopement plans, she has one message: 'Take a deep breath and trust the timing.'
