Immunotherapy: A ray of hope for lung cancer patients

Mike Espina was losing weight, getting more tired than usual, and growing weaker every day, his energy being drained like the flame of a candle slowly ebbing away. Returning home to the Philippines after working abroad, he went to see a doctor and underwent some tests. There was a mass in his lung and a biopsy confirmed his worst fear: He had stage four lung cancer.

Mike will never forget the day the doctor pronounced his death sentence. He recounts in his blog: “As I remember, it was like in a movie. Suddenly, everything stopped and movements became like in a slow motion. I could not comprehend what my doctor was talking about, it could not sink into my head ... I was enveloped by fear because I felt I would die too soon, not achieving the things I wanted to happen in my life.”

A visibly shaken Mike asked himself: “How could this happen to me when I lived such a healthy lifestyle — I ran regularly, ate healthy, and did not smoke?”

According to his doctor, his exposure to petroleum refineries could have triggered the development of cancer cells in his lungs. Mike lived and worked in Kuwait as a product development specialist for a telecommunications company.

Aside from his toxic exposure, his doctor said that stress could have also contributed to his condition, particularly during the wearying worrisome period of his life when Mike was a graduate student in Frankfurt.

Mike’s pulmonologist prescribed oral therapy for three months to shrink the mass found in his left lung. Only after this would they decide on a treatment plan.

After his oral therapy, and buoyed up by an ample dose of support from his friends, Mike underwent another CT scan procedure to check if the mass in his lung had shrunk. Mike got the biggest surprise of his life:  While they were only hoping for the mass to shrink, they were astonished to discover that it was completely gone! For Mike, his recovery was nothing short of a miracle.

Today, Mike, full of life and hope, is ready to face another exciting chapter in his life: He’s set to migrate to the United States later this year or early next year. Meanwhile, he’s taking it one day at a time. He’s doing some painting, which he learned from his support group as part of his therapy. And every chance he gets, he never tires of telling people his story.  “I want to share my experiences so I can help raise awareness on how we can overcome lung cancer. I am grateful to have been healed by God, and I hope others can be inspired by my healing.”

 “We have heard stories from lung cancer survivors, and they are stories that touch us,” says Dr. Gerry Cornelio, oncologist at St. Luke’s Medical Center. “However, the challenges of lung cancer remain pressing, and they need to be addressed.”

And the battle rages on. According to the 2012 Globocan statistics of the International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC), lung cancer is the most common type and cause of cancer death among Filipino men, and top two in mortality among Filipino women.

The World Health Organization (WHO) sees a spike in lung cancer diagnosis in the next 20 years. About three years ago, WHO reported 8.2 million cancer-related deaths and 14M new cancer cases (this is expected to increase to 22M in the next two decades).

While smoking is the number one culprit behind lung cancer, there are other factors that increase one’s risk of lung cancer, such as pollution, exposure to high doses of radiation, heredity, and industrial and chemical carcinogens.

Last week was National Cancer Consciousness Week and the Usapang Kanser round-table discussion organized by Merck Sharp & Dome (MSD) instilled awareness of this disease and what’s being done to win the battle vs. the Big C. The good news is, current developments in lung cancer treatment are giving patients — and their families — newfound sense of hope.

“Chemotherapy remains one of the common ways of curing cancer, but there are recent breakthroughs in lung cancer treatment that can help more patients,” reveals Dr. Gary Lorenzo, oncologist from the Makati Medical Center.

The good doctor mentions other forms of therapy, such as radiation, which kills cancer cells, and targeted therapy, which counters specific abnormalities in cancer cells.

But of all the treatment options available to patients, Dr. Lorenzo points out that a form of treatment called immunotherapy has proven very promising in clinical trials abroad.

What’s immunotherapy?

Immunotherapy is a form of treatment where the body’s immune system is trained to recognize and ward off cancer cells. Especially when it is healthy, the body has the natural capacity to fight off cancer cells. Immunotherapy stimulates the immune system to work harder and smarter so it could attack cancer cells more efficiently.

“Immunotherapy allows us to use our immune systems, our bodies, to combat the disease so what we have is not really the same kind of side effects or toxicities that you see with chemotherapy or other cytotoxic agents,” notes Dr. Gerry Cornelio.

The treatment has shown astounding promise as can be gleaned from results of clinical trials presented at the American Society for Clinical Oncology annual conference last year. Aside from lung cancer, immunotherapy was found to be effective against melanoma, kidney, bladder, and head and neck cancers. Immunotherapy has also shown some promise in the treatment of mesothelioma, a cancer related to asbestos exposure.

Cancer patients who participated in the clinical trials in the UK happily reported they have been cured of their tumors only after weeks of immunotherapy. Some of these patients were initially given only a few months to live.

Indeed, immunotherapy has sparked more than a glimmer of hope for cancer patients in the western world. Once this treatment option becomes available in the Philippines, many patients who are hanging on to a slim thread of hope may just get a second lease on life.

 “Lung cancer treatment is still continuously improving. We are hoping that if we can’t beat it, we can at least make it a controllable disease,” discloses Dr. Cornelio.

Dr. Cornelio, however, still believes that despite all these developments in lung cancer treatment, nothing beats a healthy lifestyle when it comes to battling lung or other cancers. “A sound and healthy lifestyle, and a clean environment, remain important factors in lung cancer treatment,” he stresses.