Eva has never smoked a day in her life. She is 46 years old, a mother to three children, a vegetarian, and an all-around model of good health–she rides her bicycle everywhere she goes! Then, ”lightning struck,” and Eva found herself with a diagnosis of stage IV lung cancer.
A year and several rounds of chemotherapy later, including treatment in a clinical trial, Eva is back to her old spunky self. You can read more about Eva’s story on our website.
Her life-saving doctor, Laura Q.M. Chow, MD, started Eva on an immunotherapy clinical trial.
Immunotherapy agents are demonstrating for the first time that lung cancer can be treated as an immunological disease. In the past, further chemotherapy or other therapies have largely been ineffective for lung cancer patients who have progressed despite two or more lines of chemotherapy. In contrast, immunotherapy has shown responses, dramatic tumor regressions, improved survival, and an excellent quality of life with minimal side effects, even in patients who have failed all prior and multiple lines of chemotherapy.
“SCCA has expertise in immunotherapy and was one of the first cancer centers involved in immunotherapy clinical trials to enroll patients onto the anti-PD-L1 clinical trials and find astonishing activity in lung cancer,” says Dr. Chow, a medical oncologist at SCCA, in the spring issue of SCCA’s The Leading Edge . Dr. Chow is dedicated to clinical research, new cancer drug development, and early phase clinical trials for patients with lung, head and neck, and esophageal cancers. “We have a number of interesting immunotherapies we are studying in the clinic that show therapeutic promise, including anti-PD-1 and anti-PD-L1.”
