Cancer patient given just 3 months to live is cured by experimental treatment
Cancer patient given just 3 months to live is cured by
experimental treatment
DNA-matched cancer treatment could dramatically boost
survival rates
By Alexandra Klausner June 6, 2018 | 10:12am
Two and a half years ago, doctors told a Florida woman
battling breast cancer that she had just three months to live.
Judy Perkins, 52, of Port Lucie, is now cancer free
thanks to an experimental treatment that harnessed billions of her own immune
cells, reported the BBC.
Perkins had a mastectomy and all her lymph nodes removed
and went through chemotherapy and hormonal therapy. When all those methods failed to halt the
spread of cancer to her chest and liver, she was sure she was going to die —
that is, until she met Dr. Steven Rosenberg at the National Institutes of
Health.
Rosenberg studied Perkins’ immune cells, finding those
white blood cells capable of detecting genetic mutations and fighting cancer.
Scientists then extracted those cells and grew them in a lab before injecting
her with 90 billion of them.
“I think it had been maybe 10 days since I’d gotten the
cells, and I could already feel that tumor starting to get soft,” Perkins told
CBS. “By then I was like, ‘Dang, this is really working.'”
Rosenberg believes Perkins’ cells are still working to
keep her cancer free.
“Circulating in her body are large numbers of cells we
administered to her two and half years ago,” he said.
“This is just one treatment that’s necessary because the
cells are alive. They’re part of Judy. They are Judy Perkins.”
Perkins signed up for Rosenberg’s cancer trial knowing
there were risks involved. She sent two of her friends with cancer to
Rosenberg’s lab for the same treatment and both of them died, NBC reported.
Rosenberg, who takes on patients with particularly
aggressive cancers or just months to live, knows the treatment is not yet ready
for widespread use but believes it could pave the way for treatment of several
different cancers.
“A lot of works needs to be done, but the potential
exists for a paradigm shift in cancer therapy — a unique drug for every cancer
patient — it is very different to any other kind of treatment,” Rosenberg told
the BBC.
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