FOR BREAKING NEWS VISIT WWW.QNS.COM JUNE 7, 2018 • HEALTH • THE QUEENS COURIER 63
health
More research is leading to more cures for cancer patients
In 2010, Kristin Kleinhofer was feeling
healthy when she found a bump on
the top of the right side of her head and
thought it was just a “harmless cyst.”
Aft er her mother suggested she see a doctor,
surgery was performed to remove the
growth. Th e biopsy results came back a
week later and much to everyone’s surprise,
Kristin was informed via a phone
call at work that she had blood cancer
and needed to immediately leave her
job to have blood work done and was
scheduled to meet with an oncologist the
next morning. At age 36, she was diagnosed
with acute lymphoblastic leukemia.
Kristin refl ected on how overwhelmed
she felt, “it was a lot to take in, a lot of
unloading of my life ... I learned that
I didn’t know how strong I was until
being strong was the only choice I had.”
Aft er a two-year protocol of intense
inpatient and outpatient chemotherapy,
Kristin went into remission for eighteen
months, but in February 2014, while eating
dinner with her partner, Benny, she
felt a lump on the right side of her neck
and soon discovered that the leukemia
had returned. Kristin immediately
began salvage chemotherapy, but it was
ineff ective and left her with serious side
eff ects, some of which she still has today.
Th en, while enrolled in a 4-week inpatient
combination chemotherapy clinical
trial, Kristin’s oncologist mentioned
CAR T cell immunotherapy as a possible
option to perhaps get into remission.
Kristin had never heard of immunotherapy
before, and went home to
research with her family. Doctor stories
and educational videos helped to inform
Kristin’s decision, and she immediately
asked her oncologist to reach out to the
medical institutions that had open clinical
trials for CAR T cell immunotherapy.
Kristin was on her way to reaching
remission once again.
The Future of Immunotherapy
Treatments
Approximately every 3 minutes, one
person in the United States is diagnosed
with a blood cancer. While a cure
for leukemia does not yet exist, new
immune-based treatments are currently
in development and improving the
prognosis for people living with blood
and bone marrow cancers. Clinical trials
for leukemia are testing immunotherapies
that fall into several broad categories,
including adoptive cell therapy,
targeted antibodies, checkpoint inhibitors,
therapeutic vaccines, and oncolytic
viruses.
Immunotherapy is widely considered
to be the most promising new cancer
treatment approach since the development
of the fi rst chemotherapies in the
1940s. Cancer immunotherapy treatments
harness and enhance the innate
powers of the immune system to fi ght
cancer.
Chimeric antigen receptor (CAR) T
cell therapy, a type of adoptive cell therapy,
has been shown in early clinical trials
to be particularly eff ective at treating
leukemia. In CAR T cell therapy, T cells
from a patient are removed and then
genetically modifi ed to express a receptor
that recognizes a particular protein,
called an antigen, found on leukemia
cells. Th e receptor is called “chimeric”
because it is a hybrid molecule made up
of two diff erent proteins (an antibody
and a T cell receptor) joined together.
In 2011, Carl H. June, M.D., Michael
Kalos, Ph.D., and colleagues at the
University of Pennsylvania School
of Medicine achieved good clinical
responses in patients with chronic lymphocytic
leukemia (CLL), including two
complete, durable clinical responses.
Aft er Kristin’s mother shared a video
with her and Benny about the doctors’
immunotherapy work, it made sense to
her that she’d use her own immune system
to eliminate the cancer as her body
had become resistant to standard chemotherapy
regimens.
What’s Next for
Immunotherapy Patients
In November 2014, Kristin offi cially
began the CAR T cell therapy clinical
trial. As one of the fi rst to receive
outpatient treatment, nurses and other
professionals were especially excited to
support and document Kristin’s journey.
Unlike her previous chemotherapy
treatments, aft er the CAR T cell infusion
was completed and she had experienced
the anticipated cytokine release
syndrome-characterized by intense fl ulike
symptoms-she felt like she could
begin recovering right away with minimal
side eff ects. Two weeks before Christmas,
a bone marrow biopsy confi rmed that the
cancer was gone and Kristin was in remission.
Kristin refl ected, “It was the best
Christmas gift ” for her entire family, and
they were elated that the immunotherapy
treatment worked.
Now, almost four years later, Kristin
celebrates life with her family and partner,
Benny, traveling and checking adventures
off her bucket list. In her free time,
Kristin also off ers independent patient
navigation and advocacy. Her goal is to
help educate people about their options
by sharing her own story, and to create
tools and helpful online resources. “It’s
important to be your own advocate, and if
you can’t, have a loved one be your advocate
so you feel in control of what is happening
to you,” Kristin explained.
“Once you choose hope, anything is
possible,” is a mantra Kristin lives by and
one that has become especially meaningful
to her family. “Immunotherapy
off ers so much hope for those that have
run out of treatment options and it’s
changing lives,” said Kristin. She remains
optimistic that more patients will benefi
t from emerging immunotherapy treatments
through new FDA-approved therapies
and clinical trial participation.
Th ere are many other cancer patients
and survivors, like Kristin, who have been
given new hope and longer lives thanks to
cancer immunotherapy research and clinical
trials.
“Clinical trials today are evaluating
immunotherapies as a fi rst-line cancer
treatment, and we are beginning to see
the fi rst FDA approvals in the fi rst-line
setting, providing patients with more
treatment options earlier in their journey,”
said Dr. Jill O’Donnell-Tormey,
chief executive offi cer and director of
scientifi c aff airs at the Cancer Research
Institute. “We hope our Clinical Trial
Finder gives more promise to patients.”
For more information on cancer immunotherapy
and how to match with an open
clinical trial, visit the Cancer Research
Institute Cancer Immunotherapy Clinical
Trial Finder at https://www.cancerresearch.
org/patients/clinical-trials.
Courtesy BPT
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