Back in early March, game show fans worldwide were struck with some truly dispiriting news: An announcement from Jeopardy! host Alex Trebek that he had been diagnosed with stage 4 pancreatic cancer. Over the last few months—even as the show itself has commanded increased pop culture scrutiny, thanks to the run of ongoing record-breaker James Holzhauer—Trebek has been candid about the struggles with the disease, which has only a 9 percent survival rate.
It’s incredibly heartening, then, to read a new People article on Trebek today, in which the game show institution announced that his cancer is responding shockingly well to his chemotherapy regimen, and that he’s been told by doctors that he’s in “near remission.” (For the record, that’s not an exact medical term; partial remission is typically defined as a reduction by 50 percent in the rate of tumor growth size, although it can vary from cancer to cancer) According to Trebek, “The doctors said they hadn’t seen this kind of positive result in their memory…some of the tumors have already shrunk by more than 50 percent.”
It’s encouraging news, although the 78-year-old Trebek says he still has several rounds of chemo left to undergo.