My tumours went. It was incredible
WHEN Dimas Padilla found out his cancer had returned for a third time, doctors told him he had only months to live.
The father-of-two, who was first diagnosed with non-Hodgkins lymphoma in 2011, had started putting his affairs in order when he received a call asking him to take part in a medical trial.
Last week Mr Padilla, a 44-yearold sales representative from Florida, celebrated two years in remission following successful CAR-T cell therapy.
When he joined the trial, tumours in his neck had grown so large he was unable to talk to his wife Johanna, 44, and their daughters, aged 14 and seven.
In August 2016 T- cells were removed from his blood and sent to a lab in California, where they were reprogrammed to attack his cancer, then infused intravenously into his body over two weeks.
‘Within two days of the treatment, I noticed my neck was skinnier,’ he said. ‘When I started to look for the tumours, they were gone. It was incredible.’
After overcoming side- effects such as fevers of up to 105F, he now has six-monthly check-ups and said: ‘There is no doubt that this treatment saved my life.’