Senator Harry Reid's Fight
- Former Nevada Senator Harry Reid has passed away at 82-years-old; he battled pancreatic cancer for years and went through an experimental treatment which prolonged his life.
- The experimental treatment, developed by Dr. Patrick Soon-Shiong, attempts to use multiple parts of the immune system to destroy tumors. Dr. Soon-Shiong talked to SurvivorNet about the science behind the clinical trial.
- This therapy was also used by late Jeopardy! host Alex Trebek, who also reaped incredible benefits.
While going through a colonoscopy in 2018, Reid’s doctors said that his colon looked fine, but something else was troubling them. The doctor encouraged the former Senator to get an MRI to make sure everything was okay, and while getting examined at John's Hopkins, they discovered a lesion on his pancreas. He was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer.
Read MoreSenator Harry Reid talked to SurvivorNet about the experimental therapy that prolonged his life
Inside the Experimental Therapy
While other cancer treatments often incorporate high-doses of chemotherapy and radiation, Dr. Soon-Shiong’s experimental treatment strays from that approach. Dr. Soon-Shiong argues that chemotherapy and radiation greatly weaken the immune system, and that his goal in the experimental trial is actually to awaken the body's natural defenses. His new form of immunotherapy attempts to use multiple parts of the immune system to destroy tumors. In order to do this, one needs to expose the tumor by activating three cells in the body the natural killer cell, the T cell, and macrophage.
"We've gone now to this next level of immunotherapy," Dr. Soon-Shiong previously told SurvivorNet in an exclusive interview. "What's exciting is that you have, in your own body, three cells that you were born with to protect you against infection and cancer. The problem is cancer has figured out a way to hide so your immune system can't find it. So the first step is just to very quickly expose the tumor. Then we give a simple subcutaneous injection, like a flu shot, of a protein that activates two of these cells called the natural killer cell and T-cell. These cells kill just the tumor, and that's in essence the protocol."
While many experimental therapies and treatments require patients to stay in the hospital, Dr. Soon-Shiong's trial is outpatient. So, participants receive a protein through an IV to activate the natural killer cell and T cell and then are able to leave afterwards. The experimental therapy is currently offered at two locations in Southern California, including The Chan Soon-Shiong Institute for Medicine in El Segundo, California.
"We want this to be the treatment of the future," Dr. Soon-Shiong says. "What's exciting is not only have we done this with pancreatic cancer, [but] we've done this with lung cancer; we've done this with triple negative breast cancer; we've done this with head and neck cancer, [and] cervical cancer."
Pancreatic Cancer: Explained
Pancreatic cancer is known as one of the most difficult types of cancers to treat, and a lot of it has to do with the fact that early-stage diagnoses are extremely rare. In many cases, symptoms often don't present themselves until the disease has spread. Some of the main symptoms associated with pancreatic cancer may include jaundice, weight loss, back pain or diabetes. This leads to more late-stage diagnoses, and therefore treatment options can be more limited. According to Dr. Anirban Maitra, 80% of diagnoses are caught in later stages since symptoms don't present themselves until the disease has already spread.
Another reason pancreatic cancer is one of the most difficult cancers to treat is because of the stroma a barrier around cancer cells which prevents medications, such as chemotherapy and radiation, from targeting and killing these cells. If these cells continue to grow, then the disease will continue to progress.
"Think of pancreatic cancer as an oatmeal raisin cookie and the raisins are actually the cancer cells, and the cookie part is actually all the stroma around it," Dr. Allyson Ocean, a medical oncologist at Weill Cornell Medical Center, previously told SurvivorNet. "And imagine having to navigate through all that stroma for a treatment to be able to get into a cell to kill it. So that's why the treatments just really aren't good enough to penetrate the cancer. But we're improving, we're getting better treatments."
Dr. Allyson Ocean provides a breakdown of pancreatic cancer
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