Helen Hughes is a 32-year-old Welsh woman in England who had advanced lymphoma and it had spread to her liver, lungs and bone marrow ……
But after receiving a new T-cell immunotherapy, no trace of cancer cells can now be found in her body.
How did Hughes make a miraculous escape from death? The story has to start 2 years ago.
A huge tumor
On Christmas Eve 2018, the doctor told Hughes that an ultrasound had found a lump in her chest the size of a grapefruit.
At this time, Hughes was pregnant with her third, and her oldest and second were both still toddlers and babies. Hughes had felt ill during the pregnancy, but never expected it to be lymphoma.
Hughes was extremely weak, and naturally, she didn’t have a good Christmas that year. She began chemotherapy almost immediately afterwards and gave birth to her third child 10 weeks later.
Metastasis spread
But last fall, Hughes got the bad news she’d feared most: conventional cancer treatments had done little to help, and her cancer had metastasized to her bone marrow, liver and lungs.
Doctors told her to prepare for the worst.
So Hughes began preparing memory boxes for her three young children (ages 4, 2+ and 1.5) so that they would grow up knowing everything they remember about their mother.
T-cell immunotherapy
But earlier this year, Ms. Hughes was notified that she could receive a new T-cell immunotherapy (also known as Chimeric Antigen Receptor T-cell Immunotherapy, CAR-T, Chimeric Antigen Receptors Cell Therapy).
The immunotherapy had just been approved by the NHS, the UK’s universal health system.
Hughes saw a ray of hope. It was her last hope, she said.
Previously, she and her husband had considered paying out of their own pocket for a private clinic that offered this new treatment, but could not afford it because the cost was up to £500,000 (about 4.5 million yuan).
Treatment principle
Earlier this year, Hughes began receiving T-cell immunotherapy. This new therapy uses the patient’s own T-cells to destroy cancer cells.
Hughes is also the first female cancer patient in all of Wales to receive this innovative treatment.
It uses the patient’s own T cells to kill many different types of cancer cells. It is also known as a “living drug” because it is tailored to each patient’s own cells.
First, doctors isolate a part of the patient’s immune system, specifically the T cells in the white blood cells, from the blood, freeze them in liquid nitrogen, and then send them to a lab in the United States.
Researchers then genetically modify the T cells to become T cell-specific receptors with the ability to seek out and destroy cancer cells. The genetically modified T cells will specifically identify and attack cancer cells instead of killing bacteria and viruses.
This T-cell-specific receptor replicates and multiplies in large numbers in the laboratory and is then injected back into the patient.
Medical professionals grow millions of these genetically modified cells in laboratories in the United States before shipping them back to the United Kingdom to be injected into patients’ blood.
The whole process takes a month. The T cells, which have the ability to destroy cancer cells, stay in the patient’s body and continue to multiply.
Ms. Hughes stayed at a cancer treatment center in Manchester for five weeks to receive the treatment, and, just in time for the outbreak.
Hughes said the treatment also had some scary side effects, and there were times when she didn’t know who she was and couldn’t walk or eat. But it would take six months to see what the results would be.
The family was in tears last week when the doctor finished her exam and told her the cancer was completely gone from her body.
Hughes said it was the best Christmas present they could have gotten this year.
Hughes said she was prepared for the worst, but the immune cell therapy saved her life. She added that she hopes more people will be able to receive this new therapy in the future as well.
Stem cell matching
For now, Hughes is still receiving monthly blood transfusions because her immune system is extremely low.
Although there are no more cancer cells in her body, it is more important to make sure the cancer does not come back. Therefore, Hughes needs to find a stem cell donor and hopes to return to work by the end of next year.
Hughes explained that stem cell therapy is expected to keep the cancer from coming back. So, she hopes to find a stem cell donor who is a match for her.
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