It was a compelling, dramatic story, about a Pennsylvania girl named Emma Whitehead who’d had aggressive, treatment-resistant leukemia. Last spring, Whitehead’s doctors performed an experimental treatment on her, removing millions of her T-cells and inserting new genes, using a “disabled form of H.I.V. because it is very good at carrying genetic material into T-cells.” From there, the altered cells were returned to her body, with the hope that “if all goes well they multiply and start destroying the cancer.”
The experiment was not an immediate success. Whitehead had an intense reaction, including severe drops in blood pressure and fevers that pitched up to 105 degrees. But her doctor, Carl June, hit upon the idea of using an existing drug to lower her cytokines level, and she quickly stabilized. Better than that, she’s now been in full remission for several months. It’s a breakthrough of unprecedented proportions, one with unlimited potential.
I had recognized the narrative as soon as I’d started the story. Back in October, I’d seen two of the doctors mentioned in the Times feature, Dr. June and Sloan-Kettering’s Dr. Michel Sadelain, at the Cancer Research Institute’s awards dinner. I’d heard them tell their story, as they were given a prize for Distinguished Research in Tumor Immunology. The person handing it to them was my doctor.
Immunology has traditionally been the redheaded stepchild of cancer research. Using the body’s own defenses to fight off tumors has long been considered a dubious proposition – too difficult to execute, too controversial because of the resources required to search for answers. The past few years, however, have brought real results that have translated into a variety of new approaches. The Gardasil vaccine is now routinely used on young men and women to prevent the HPV virus, which in turn can help prevent cervical cancer. Doctors at Roswell Park Cancer Center are now working on a cancer vaccine. And in 2011, the FDA approved Ipilimumab, a drug therapy for melanoma unlike any other that’s come before, one that works with the body’s immune system.
Five months after Ipilimumab went on the market, I was one of those patients who needed it. The malignant cancer that I had undergone surgery for a year before had returned with a vengeance, metastasized into my lungs and under my flesh. At Stage 4, I was facing a diagnosis that generally offers patients only a few months to live. I could do the math. I was looking at my birthday and Thanksgiving and Christmas but maybe not Easter. Summer was definitely a long shot. That’s when my oncologist recommended a clinical trial that was combining Ipilimumab with a new investigational drug. I jumped in as soon as possible, entering the first cohort of the first phase, a place in research where, as a doctor later admitted to me, “We usually expect a lot of losses.” Instead, three months later, I was cancer-free. Just like Emma Whitehead.
by Mary Elizabeth Williams, Salon | Read more:
Photo: NY Times
