Cured with a wonder injection: Mother of two with ‘terminal’ breast cancer
Science Correspondent in Chicago
A WOMAN given months to live after all treatments for her breast cancer failed has been cured by a breakthrough injection.
Judy Perkins had tumours the size of plums in her liver after cancer spread through her body, and had made a ‘bucket list’ of places to visit before she died.
She had been treated with seven types of chemotherapy – which all failed. But then a world-first immunotherapy treatment turned everything around.
The 52-year-old saw her tumours totally destroyed by an injection of white blood cells that turbo-charged her immune system.
The treatment, called adoptive cell transfer, involved taking her own white blood cells out of her body to be grown in their billions and reinjected. It is the first time it has been used successfully to eradicate breast cancer and it is now hoped it will be available to other patients within five years.
The mother of two has now been cancer-free for two years. Mrs Perkins said: ‘My condition deteriorated a lot towards the end and I had a tumour pressing on a nerve, which meant I spent my time trying not to move at all to avoid pain shooting down my arm. I had given up fighting.
‘But after the treatment dissolved most of my tumours, I was able to go for a 40-mile hike.
‘I went from being on morphine and a lot of painkillers to stopping taking them all in one go. It feels miraculous and I am beyond amazed that I have now been free of cancer for two years. Experts may call it extended remission but I call it a cure.’
Just 15 per cent of people respond so dramatically to immunotherapy, which harnesses the body’s own immune system to fight cancer. Mrs Perkins, an engineer from Florida, is the first to be given adoptive cell transfer for incurable breast cancer.
Scientists from the National Cancer Institute in the US led the treatment, removing a tumour from her chest to determine her breast cancer ‘signature’ – the genetic mutations that make each person’s cancer unique. They found she had white blood cells with the ability to seek and destroy four 62 mutations.
They took several hundred of these important immune T-cells and grew them into an army of 82billion cells. This took eight weeks, after which the white blood cells were injected back into her body.
Dr Steven Rosenberg, a lead member of the team who carried out the treatment in December 2015, said: ‘This patient came to us in a desperate situation, with every treatment having failed. The breakthrough here is in find- of her ing an approach able to identify the T-cells which target genetic mutations and in being able to grow them to this number. But the important point is that this is using a patient’s own cells to attack their own cancer.’
Mrs Perkins was first diagnosed with breast cancer in the lining of her ducts in 2003 and had a mastectomy – but the cancer returned a decade later. She had seven types of chemotherapy and another experimental drug trial before running out of options.
In December 2015, she found out the cancer had spread to her liver, the lymph nodes in her chest wall, and her abdomen.
Mrs Perkins, who has two sons aged 18 and 20, said: ‘When you have metastatic cancer, you can be treated but not cured. Each treatment worked for less time than the treatment before, and it was exhausting.
‘I couldn’t do anything which I had enjoyed before and I didn’t want it to continue. I wanted to get dying over with.’ On the breakthrough procedure, she said: ‘Within two weeks I could feel the tumours in my chest wall shrinking and I started to feel better. The doctors were beaming at the results – they were practically tap dancing with happiness.
‘I had resigned my job and was planning on dying. I had a bucket list of things I needed to do before the end, like going to the Grand Canyon. Now I have gone back to normal everyday life.’
Half of Mrs Perkins’s tumours had disappeared within six weeks of treatment and were completely eradicated within a year, according to the case report published in Nature Medicine.
The researchers, who presented their findings at the annual conference of the American Society of Clinical Oncology in Chicago this week, had expected her to survive for only a few months.
Dr Stephanie Goff, who was involved in the treatment, said: ‘Judy could barely move she was in so much pain, and now she’s kayaking.’
Dr Michael Sabel, of the University of Michigan, added: ‘We have been struggling in getting the immune system to recognise cancer for many years, especially for some types of cancer. These results are very inspiring.’
Cancer Research UK said the technique is likely to cost ‘tens of thousands of pounds’ but Dr Sabel said costs are likely to fall as the technology improves.
One in eight women in the UK will develop breast cancer in their lifetime.
‘Tap dancing with happiness’