Alex Trebek 'Beating the Odds of Pancreatic Cancer'

Alex Trebek said that his stage 4 pancreatic cancer is in “near remission” in a recent interview with PEOPLE Magazine.

“It’s kind of mind-boggling,” Trebek said to PEOPLE. “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%.”

It had only been a few months since Trebek announced that he was diagnosed with cancer, and his current outcome could be a beacon of hope for patients with the disease — who tend to have poor prognoses. According to the American Cancer Society, the five-year relative survival rate for pancreatic cancer is about 50% and that number drops to about 3% for distant (stage 4) disease.

Trebek’s experience with pancreatic cancer and its treatments has not always been a pleasant one. Earlier in May, he talked with "CBS Sunday Morning" about how he was feeling.

“I was on the floor writhing in pain. It went from a 3 to an 11,” he said. “And it happened three or four times a day while we were taping. So, that was a little rough on me.”

The game show host still has several more rounds of chemotherapy ahead of him and he will rely on his medical team and the well wishes of fans to help get him through.

“I’ve got a couple million people out there who have expressed their good thoughts, their positive energy directed toward me and their prayers,” he said to PEOPLE. “I told the doctors, ‘this has to be more than just chemo,’ and they agreed it could very well be an important part of this.”

A version of this article originally appeared on Oncology Nursing News as, “Alex Trebek’s Cancer Is ‘Near Remission’”