John Ryan is just one of the miracles to emerge from the Johns Hopkins cancer unit in Baltimore. An immunotherapy treatment saved his life after a lung cancer diagnosis. The retired military nuclear reactor specialist will celebrate his 74th birthday in July. His battle with cancer illustrates the promises and failures of immunotherapy, a burgeoning field in which the pharmaceutical industry is investing heavily.
Ryan has been able to attend the graduations of three of his children, and will take part in the wedding of one of his daughters this summer — even though doctors expected he had just 18 months to live in June 2013.
Immunotherapy is one of two major categories of drugs against cancer. The best-known is chemotherapy, which has been used for decades and aims to kill tumours but is so toxic that it also attacks healthy cells, leading to major side effects like weakness, pain, diarrhoea, nausea and hair and weight loss.
Ryan went through all that in 2013, and his tumour persisted.
Exhausted by chemo and wracked with pain, Ryan was accepted into a last-ditch clinical trial using nivolumab (brand name Opdivo) in late 2013.
The drug was delivered intravenously at the hospital, at first every two weeks, then once a month. His tumour rapidly disappeared, and 104 injections later, the main side effect has been itching. Recently, a mysterious mass appeared in his right lung. It was treated with radiation.
“They shot me with chemo, it almost killed me. And now I have been sucking up immunotherapy, and it’s been good. My quality of life has been great,” said Ryan.
Immunotherapy trains the body’s natural defences to detect and kill cancer cells, which otherwise can adapt and hide.
Some experts are cautious, having been disappointed numerous times by other newfangled approaches to fighting cancer.
But many consider immunotherapy as a turning point. More than 30 immunotherapy drugs are in development, and 800 clinical trials are underway, according to Otis Brawley, medical director of the American Cancer Society.
Ryan’s oncologist, Julie Brahmer, said she now starts about a third of her lung cancer patients on immunotherapy first, not chemo.
It helps that the Baltimore facility has numerous clinical trials under way, far more than the average US hospital.
Doctors are intrigued by the unusually long remissions seen in a small number of patients like Ryan. These success stories make up about 10 to 15 per cent of patients, said William Nelson, director of the Sidney Kimmel Comprehensive Cancer Center at Johns Hopkins. — AFP
Ivan Couronne
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