Suche
Mein Konto
A Florida woman who bypassed her doctors to get an experimental cancer treatment that "gene edits" immune cells saw her lung tumors shrink to less than a third of their original size within six months.
Kathy Wilkes, 71, endured eight rounds of chemotherapy and surgery after being diagnosed with aggressive pancreatic cancer in 2018.
But despite the treatments, within a year of her diagnosis, the disease had spread from the pancreas to the lungs.
Desperate to beat cancer, Wilkes began searching for new treatments online - and quickly stumbled upon a case study in a reputable online research journal about a treatment that had already rendered a 50-year-old woman with colon cancer "disease-free."
She contacted the doctors behind the trial at the Providence Cancer Institute in Portland, Oregon, and after tests showed her cancer had the same mutation - called KRAS G12D - she was also offered the treatment.
Within a month, their tumors had shrunk by half, and in six months they had shrunk to 28 percent of their original size.
Wilkes is not cured yet, but the cancer has not grown since she received the treatment. she said NBC News: "I knew this was the test that would save me, save my life. I just had this feeling."
The story was revealed in a case report published in New England Journal of Medicine the same journal in which the original case study she found was published.
Kathy Wilkes, 71, of Ormond Beach, Florida, underwent eight rounds of chemotherapy and surgery after it was discovered she had pancreatic cancer
But Wilkes (pictured with her husband) then stumbled upon an article in the New England Journal of Medicine about a treatment that could help with cancer
About 60,000 Americans are diagnosed with pancreatic cancer each year, the estimates American Cancer Society.
It is one of the deadliest cancers because symptoms are rarely triggered in the early stages and patients go undiagnosed until it reaches an advanced stage and spreads to other organs.
It is estimated that only 11 percent of patients survive five years after their diagnosis.
Patients are offered surgery to remove cancerous areas before the disease spreads and rounds of chemotherapy.
But Wilkes said when her doctor suggested this treatment method, it was "not my answer."
After researching on the internet, she came across this New England Journal of Medicine Study from 2016.
The newspaper reported how a 50-year-old woman with colon cancer that had spread to her lungs became "disease-free" after being treated with "gene-edited" immune cells.
Wilkes believed this would help her and emailed the study's author, Dr. Eric Tran, who specializes in novel methods for treating cancer.
After tests revealed her cancer had the same mutation as the other patient's - although they were different types - she was offered the treatment.
Cancers in different areas of the body often have the same mutations, which may be because certain changes are required to trigger the disease.
For the therapy, the scientists first extracted some T cells of the immune system - which can destroy disease-affected cells - from the patient.
They were then “genetically reprogrammed” in a laboratory to target cancer cells that have the specific KRAS G12D mutation.
The cells were then multiplied billions of times before being injected back into the patient's vein.
Wilkes received her infusion in June 2021 and within a month, her tumors had already begun to shrink.
Dr. Eric Rubin, the journal's editor-in-chief, who was not involved in the study, said it was an "encouraging result."
"For the first time, we have an approach that could enable the treatment of a wide variety of tumors beyond the small number of tumors that [immune therapy] can be used," he said at a briefing, NBC reports.
"The particular mutation [in this case] is common in tumors that arise from epithelial cells, such as lung, ovarian and pancreatic cancer."
It's not clear how well the treatment works in other patients, but a Phase 1 clinical trial is now being launched to investigate this.
Another pancreatic cancer patient who received the same treatment at Providence Cancer Institute did not survive.
She contacted doctors and was enrolled in the study after it was discovered that her cancer had the same mutation as a previous patient who was being treated for colon cancer
Her tumors shrank to less than a third of their original size within six months and have not grown since treatment
Scientists said it may have worked for Wilkes because of the KRAS mutation, which only occurs in about four percent of patients with this type of cancer.
Wilkes was diagnosed with adenocarcinoma of the head of the pancreas, the most common form of the disease.
Research has been underway for years to harness the immune system to fight cancer instead of relying on drugs.
Currently, patients with blood cancer can receive a type of immunotherapy – called CAR-T – to fight their disease.