She underwent six months of chemotherapy and a mastectomy in April 2018, followed by 15 cycles of radiotherapy which cleared her body of cancer.
But in October 2019 the cancer returned, and scans showed it had spread to her lung, lymph nodes and chest bone and she was told she had a poor prognosis.
'Horrible side effects'
Two months later, the mother-of-two was offered a two-year trial at The Christie of an experimental medicine combined with Atezolizumab, an immunotherapy drug.
Doctors have told her she is now showing no evidence of the disease.
Worth noting that "no evidence of disease" is not the same as cured. My mother was diagnosed with a moderately-aggressive terminal metastatic breast cancer and given months to live, but enjoyed a few years of high quality of life after her doctor cleared her with "no evidence of disease" thanks to an aggressive chemotherapy protocol. That was about 15 years ago. She passed just under 7 years from diagnosis.
No, we don't have the technology. Once cancer cells are systemic (metastatic), they can end up in bone or brain, where it can be extremely difficult to detect or treat. Cancer cells only need one rogue cell, and takes about 2 years to grow to a size that appears in tests.
Sadly, cancer can also mutate to avoid the PD-L1 pathway.
About 100% of older people have cancer. It's just that many of those cancers are tiny and slow growing, such that they don't cause any serious clinical symptoms and often aren't even detectible with routine screening tests.
You’d have to come up with a definition of cancer free. Cells replicating poorly resulting in a cancerous single cell happens all the time and gets cleaned up.
My mom was diagnosed around 2003, extremely aggressive breast cancer, they gave her around 9 months as I recall.
It went into remission. Treatment was very effective. Her doctor had no idea how such an aggressive cancer was put into remission so quickly.
Around 3 years later it was back despite routine checks and her being clear of cancer. This time it was everywhere very suddenly, yet it took 4 years to kill her. Such an awful way to go.
Really sad to hear that story. Out of curiosity, has she changed her way of living post treatment? I always wondered, if you stick in the same environment with the same lifestyle, I feel like it's something that could retrigger it. Could be the water, the polution, the food, lack of sun ...
Out of curiosity, has she changed her way of living post treatment?
I always wondered, if you stick in the same environment with the same lifestyle, I feel like it's something that could retrigger it. Could be the water, the polution, the food, lack of sun ... Also I read that it's not great to stay at the same place that made you sick in the first place.
Impressive story in line with the impressive efficacy of some immunotherapy candidates. However not every patient gets a miracle which is something the press is terrible at conveying
It's almost unbelievable to read about quick and clean solutions like these for cancer (especially with long history of treatment and relapse). Very uplifting.
Any specifics about the drugs involved and availability in the EU for patients willing to try the treatment on themselves?
My girlfriend works as a psycho-oncologist; she's in contact with terminal patients on a daily basis.
I wonder what happened with the Doxycycline, Azithromycin and Vitamin C therapy plus fasting plus exogenous ketones therapy, which was bringing hopes a few years ago.
What to Submit
On-Topic: Anything that good hackers would find interesting. That includes more than hacking and startups. If you had to reduce it to a sentence, the answer might be: anything that gratifies one's intellectual curiosity.
Off-Topic: Most stories about politics, or crime, or sports, unless they're evidence of some interesting new phenomenon. Videos of pratfalls or disasters, or cute animal pictures. If they'd cover it on TV news, it's probably off-topic.
I was asking what I was missing, not what the rules are. If you'd care to re-read what I ask charitably you will see I am asking for assistance in understanding.
The article doesn't give details, but one of the quoted authors has participated in trials testing anti-ICOS antibody alone or in combination with atezolizumab, with results presented at an ASCO meeting: https://ascopubs.org/doi/abs/10.1200/JCO.2021.39.15_suppl.26...
Describes one complete response in TNBC (and 4 partial responses in TNBC and other cancers). Couldn't find a related peer-reviewed journal article on very quick search.
Yes, Sanofi licensed from Kymab. There are a few groups targeting ICOS/ICOSL to modulate immune response to tumor (either alone or in combo with PD-1, CTLA-4, etc approaches previously mentioned on HN). Here's one reasonably recent backgrounder on rationale: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7003380/
Still not clear that KY1044 really is the "experimental drug" mentioned in the linked BBC article, since as others have noted the article is pretty thin on detail.
Huh. It was there earlier. I can't remember what it said, a something-mab, so monoclonal antibody. I wonder why the BBC did a wee ninja-edit? Legal reasons?
I wasn't making this statement, because I was assuming good faith on everyone that voted on this article. I genuinely believe I missed what was interesting about the article, which from other responses appears to be the type of experimental drug that was used to cure this lady.
But in October 2019 the cancer returned, and scans showed it had spread to her lung, lymph nodes and chest bone and she was told she had a poor prognosis. 'Horrible side effects'
Two months later, the mother-of-two was offered a two-year trial at The Christie of an experimental medicine combined with Atezolizumab, an immunotherapy drug. Doctors have told her she is now showing no evidence of the disease.