Immunotherapy cancer treatment proves promising at Duke University
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As colon cancer rates among people younger than 50 skyrocket, a new clinical trial that uses immunotherapy, rather than physically demanding chemotherapy, is yielding promising results.
Spencer Laird received an initial colon cancer diagnosis and surgery, but his cancer returned and 13 tumors were found on his lungs. Laird feared the side effects of chemotherapy, but his wife, CarleyAnn, researched alternative treatments. They landed on a clinical trial at Duke University that tests a combination of immunotherapy drugs. A traditional treatment such as chemotherapy targets rapidly-dividing cells in the body – a hallmark of cancer. The problem is many healthy cells divide rapidly, too, which contributes to chemotherapy side effects, such as nausea, fatigue and hair loss. Immunotherapy helps train healthy cells to seek and destroy only cancerous cells.
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"I think that if I were even still here, I would more than likely be in pretty bad shape, just with the side effects and the sickness and everything that comes along with the chemo and radiation," he said. "I just feel very blessed to not have had to do that, to have kind of another way out, not only another way out that doesn’t have side effects, but that is working."
The couple now makes the eight-hour drive from their home to Durham every two weeks for treatment. For Laird, the results for his particular type of cancer have been encouraging. He now has just three tumors, the biggest of which is the size of a pencil eraser.
Dr. Nicholas DeVito, a medical oncologist and assistant professor at Duke University, said immunotherapy can give patients with certain late-stage intestinal cancers a better chance at living longer – and without the side effects and limited success that sometimes accompany chemotherapy.
"With immunotherapy, you’re retraining your immune system," he said. "It is learning to fight the cancer off inside your body. This really treats cancer more of like an immune failure, rather than like an infection that you’re treating with an anti-biotic like chemotherapy."
Colorectal cancer is the second leading cause of cancer death in the United States.
