Duke Researchers Test Drug That Mimics Cancer-Fighting Immune System

Some people's immune systems naturally defeat cancer without treatment, and researchers think they've figured out how to bottle that power.

Dr. Edward Patz spent 25 years at Duke collecting samples from lung cancer patients, searching for the difference between tumors that disappeared and those that spread. He wasn't looking at the cancer itself but at what the body was doing to fight back.

His team found the answer in an antibody called GT103. Some patients naturally produced this protein, which stripped away a molecular shield that cancer cells use to hide from the immune system. When GT103 blocked that shield, the body's natural defenses could attack the tumor.

Patz left Duke to start Grid Therapeutics and turn the discovery into a drug. The first safety trial included 31 lung cancer patients whose other treatments had failed. In a third of them, tumors stopped growing for months.

One patient's tumor completely vanished. Two years later, scans still show no sign of disease, and he's off all treatment.

The team then combined their antibody with Keytruda, an existing immunotherapy drug. The goal was to activate two different arms of the immune system at once. Results were mixed—most tumors stabilized temporarily, though some eventually grew again.

Dr. Roy Herbst, chief of medical oncology at Yale, called the approach intriguing. "It's still very early, but I like it," he said. Dr. David Barbie of Dana-Farber Cancer Institute agrees the concept is promising but cautions that proving the drug actually works will take much larger studies.

Why This Inspires

This research flips the script on cancer treatment. Instead of inventing something completely new, scientists studied the small percentage of patients whose bodies already knew how to win. They're learning from success stories written in our own biology.

The next phase needs hundreds of patients and control groups to prove whether this approach truly works. But the fact that one patient has been cancer-free for two years offers something powerful: proof that the concept can work in real human bodies, not just in theory.

Scientists are teaching medicine to copy what our best immune systems already know how to do.