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Phase 2 trial pairs short-course radiotherapy with immunotherapy in rectal cancer
AI-assisted summary Written by WellCareChina with AI assistance and checked against the original article.
A randomised phase 2 trial published in Cancer Communications on 23 July 2026 tested short-course radiotherapy followed by chemotherapy, with or without the PD-1 inhibitor tislelizumab, in patients starting treatment for locally advanced rectal cancer. Of 111 patients who started treatment, 89 had surgery; the pathological complete response rate was 45.3% with tislelizumab and 27.6% without it, a difference the authors report as not statistically significant at this trial size, while the major pathological response rate was higher with tislelizumab (50.9% versus 31.0%). Grade 3-4 adverse events during neoadjuvant treatment were comparable between the two groups. The authors describe the results as preliminary and call for a phase 3 trial (NCT05086627).
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Source tier A — open-access article (CC BY 4.0); the link goes to the PubMed record because the publisher site blocks automated access (dev-083). Our own summary, no full-text copy.