This week marks a historic moment for the cancer industry and a potentially huge gift for patients.
Just days ago, Stand Up To Cancer, the non-profit cancer organization, announced the results of a game-changing clinical trial the non-profit funded, led by Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center researchers. They revealed an enormous breakthrough that will be a big part of an entirely new era for cancer treatments.
The trial revealed that immunotherapy may completely eliminate the need for standard treatments such as surgery, chemotherapy and/or radiation in patients with certain types of solid tumors.
Published in the New England Journal of Medicine and presented simultaneously at the 2025 American Association for Cancer Research Annual Meeting, the results show that 80% of trial participants did not require standard treatments after six months of treatment with immunotherapy alone.
Stand Up To Cancer President & CEO Julian Adams, PhD, said in a press statement, “Breakthroughs in immunotherapies — treatments that harness the body’s own immune system to fight cancer — are transforming what’s possible for patients, offering more targeted, durable, and less toxic options than ever before. Continued research is essential to expanding these advances to more types of cancer and more lives.”
He added that at Stand Up To Cancer, “We are proud to support the discovery and development of new clinical trials – like the work done here by Dr. Cercek and Dr. Diaz at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center – that lead to better patient outcomes through more precise, personalized treatments.”
Multiple sources tell Breaking Cancer News that this trial is an enormous breakthrough achievement that will save lives.
“We believe one of the most promising frontiers is immunotherapy. Advances in immune checkpoint inhibitors, CAR T-cell therapies, and cancer vaccines have already reshaped the standard of care for several malignancies, offering durable responses and survival benefits where few existed before,” said Adams. “Continued investment in this research is critical to overcoming resistance mechanisms, expanding therapeutic access across diverse cancer types, and ultimately turning many forms of cancer into manageable or even curable diseases.”
The trial is led by Luis Diaz Jr., MD and Andrea Cercek, MD; both are gastrointestinal oncologists at MSK. Diaz is the leader of the SU2C Colorectal Cancer Dream Team and Cercek is a team member.
The clinical trial expands on a MSK study, partially funded by SU2C, which utilized an immunotherapy drug and showed that rectal cancer tumors completely disappeared for every trial participant – without the need for standard treatments.
From 2017 to 2024, Stand Up To Cancer supported the SU2C Colorectal Cancer Dream Team in creating new strategies to detect and treat colorectal cancer earlier, using insights from genetics, biology, and the immune system – as well as funding more than 10 clinical trials led by the Dream Team.
The team’s research has focused on unlocking the immune system to fight colorectal cancer, developing targeted therapies for key genetic mutations, and advancing precision prevention strategies to stop cancer before it starts.
With SU2C support, the team previously led a pivotal clinical trial that contributed to the first FDA approval of immunotherapy as a front-line treatment for certain metastatic colorectal cancers—helping patients avoid chemotherapy. They later made headlines with their rectal cancer trial—now expanded in the new NEJM study.
“Utilizing immunotherapy alone could change how we treat some cancers, helping patients avoid significant side effects and other challenges associated with current surgical approaches, radiation and chemotherapy treatments,” said Diaz.
“Without Stand Up To Cancer, this research and these results would not have been possible,” he added. “It’s incredibly exciting to think we may be on the verge of a new standard of care for MMRd cancers—one that is less invasive, less toxic, and just as effective.”
One Survivor’s Success Story
Maureen Sideris, 71, was diagnosed with gastroesophageal junction cancer in 2022.
“My husband Tom and I were preparing for the worst,” she says. But after joining the trial at Memorial Sloan Kettering and being treated with immunotherapy alone—without surgery, chemotherapy, or radiation—she says, “I felt like I won the lottery!”
The experience not only saved Maureen’s life, it preserved her quality of life.
“I was afraid that if I got surgery on my esophagus, I wouldn’t be able to talk for a while, which would be awful. To have immunotherapy alone was just amazing.”
Maureen is also a colorectal cancer survivor who was diagnosed in 2008. She remembers becoming familiar with SU2C around that time and has supported SU2C’s mission as a donor for many years.
“It can’t be a more noble cause,” she says.
