You might remember last summer, former President Jimmy Carter announced that melanoma found on his liver had spread to his brain. By Christmas, the 91-year-old said he was cancer-free. Carter did have surgery and radiation, but instead of chemotherapy, doctors treated him with immunotherapy.
Doctors at the University of Kansas are also on the cutting edge of immunotherapy treatments and say they are on the verge of curing cancer.
Ashley Smith remembers experiencing symptoms that sent her to the emergency room in 2015.
The doctors told her, "If you leave now, you're going to be dead in seven days.” She responded, “Excuse me?” They replied, “You have leukemia."
"I didn't even know what leukemia was," Smith said.
She ended up staying at the hospital for two weeks.
"It's just a life-changing event for not only me, but my husband, you know, and seeing me go through it. He told me, 'I'm so afraid that one morning, I'm going to wake up and you're not going to be alive,'" she said.
After an initial treatment of chemotherapy, her doctor started her on an immunotherapy drug called Blyncyto. She noticed a difference almost right away.
"I started cleaning. I started walking. I stopped riding the electric carts at Wal-Mart, because I couldn't walk a long ways," Smith said.
Immunotherapy is based on our immune system. The basic model works off checkpoint inhibitors. The role of a T-cell is to act like a patrol cop for the body and alert the rest of the “troops” to destroy an abnormal cell, like the flu. However, cancer is different because of the molecules on their cells that manipulate T-cells, essentially shutting it down. The result is that the cancer cell grows and spreads.
Immunotherapy drugs block that interaction, allowing T-cells to do their job.
Dr. Joseph McGuirk at the University of Kansas Cancer Center says there are other models of immunotherapy, including the type that Smith is using.
"She is receiving a drug that is like a two-pronged fork,” McGuirk said.
McGuirk doesn’t want to give false hope but is definitely optimistic. "I am more excited and more hopeful now than ever in my career. It's really coming into fruition what we had all dreamed of and imagined for our patients with a new understanding of the genetics of cancers, a new understanding of the proteins and how these cancers behave and extraordinarily, a new understanding of the immune system and manipulating it to kill these cancers."
Smith says she's doing great and living by the adage of “one day at a time.”
“I have a lot of good days because I make it. I open my blinds. I try to get my apartment sunny," she said.
While early results of immunotherapy show promise treating melanoma, non-Hodgkins lymphoma and lung cancer, other studies are taking place for other forms of cancer.
If you are interested in learning more about the clinical trials at the University of Kansas Cancer Center, visit their website.
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Jane Monreal can be reached at JANE.MONREAL@KSHB.com.
