Former U.S. President Jimmy Carter, who passed away on December 29, 2024, at the age of 100, will be remembered by people all over the world for his four years of service in the White House and his 40+ years of humanitarian work thereafter.

But he will also be remembered in the cancer community—especially the melanoma community—for his extraordinary battle against the disease, and particularly for his pivotal role in raising awareness of a new type of treatment called immunotherapy.

Melanoma: A Deadly Cancer

Melanoma is the deadliest form of skin cancer, and it claims the lives of more than 8,000 Americans each year. It is the fifth most common cancer for both men and women in the US. Unfortunately, the number of cases is increasing: The number of invasive melanomas diagnosed in the US in 2007 was 59,944, while in 2024 the number is estimated to be over 100,000.

In 2015, when Carter was diagnosed with melanoma that had metastasized to his liver and brain, melanoma was a difficult cancer to treat. Advanced cases such as his had an extremely low survival rate, and the average length of survival of these patients was measured in months. Before 2011, when the first immunotherapy was approved for melanoma, treatment progress had stagnated for decades.

A Game-Changing Treatment for Melanoma: Immunotherapy

The year 2011 ushered in a new class of treatments commonly referred to as immunotherapy. These drugs work by blocking the signals that prevent immune cells from attacking cancer cells; in other words, they activate the body’s immune system to recognize and attack cancer cells. The first of these drugs, ipilimumab (brand name Yervoy), was approved for melanoma in 2011, and other immunotherapy approvals for melanoma followed in 2014 and 2015. Since 2011, nine immunotherapy treatments have been approved for melanoma.

Carter’s decision to announce his treatment with pembrolizumab (brand name Keytruda), as well as the inspiring story of his prolonged survival, have helped the general public learn about immunotherapy and helped the melanoma community to have hope.

A New Era of Cancer Care

Once immunotherapy was shown to work in melanoma, researchers began testing it in other cancers, and FDA approvals soon followed.

In the years since Carter’s diagnosis, the use of immunotherapy has enormously expanded. Now it’s used to treat a wide variety of cancers, including lung, bladder, and cervical cancer. Researchers are currently exploring its potential in treating colon cancer, as well as questions such as whether it’s more effective to give immunotherapy before surgical removal of a tumor or after. Different types of immunotherapies can be combined for greater efficacy, and immunotherapies can also be combined with other types of treatments.

But while immunotherapy has brought remarkable advances, it is not a one-size-fits-all solution. In melanoma, for example, it is effective only for about half of those who take it. The other half of patients with melanoma face the same dismal statistics of the pre-immunotherapy era. More research is desperately needed.

President Carter’s Melanoma Legacy

President Carter embodied the hope that so many people in the melanoma community feel after the last decade of treatment advances. He lived nearly 10 years after his Stage IV melanoma diagnosis, and many others who were treated with immunotherapy around the same time are still alive. These results feel miraculous, given the stagnant nature of melanoma treatment not that long ago.

The last decade was so promising for the treatment of melanoma. The hope is that the next decade is even better.