HOUSTON – Doctors at Harris Health are working on a clinical trial inside Ben Taub Hospital that aims to prove cellular immunotherapy works to treat cancer and should be more accessible to patients.
RELATED: Houston doctor explains connection between gut microbiome and cancer
Dr. Martha Mims, chief of Hematology/Oncology, Harris Health Ben Taub Hospital, and associate director of Clinical Research for the Dan L. Duncan Comprehensive Cancer Center at Baylor College of Medicine, is working alongside Dr. Premal Lulla, attending physician, Harris Health Ben Taub Hospital, and associate professor, Center for Cell and Gene Therapy at Baylor College of Medicine.
“We take our T-cells from patients. We in some way train them to go after the cancer cells and then infuse them back to the patients,” explained Dr. Lulla. “Through that process, we get to see what happens to the patients. We get to see how the cells worked, what they did and of course, we really hope that it takes care of that cancer.”
They chose to bring this study to patients at Ben Taub because they knew there was a need for cutting-edge care.
“Our patients don’t have the same access to care that all the other patients in the community have,” Dr. Mims said. “Most of our patients don’t have access to these kinds of treatments which are really cutting edge and could lead to cure.”
SEE ALSO: Houston’s two pediatric cancer hospitals merging
The patients in the study are mixed on coverage: insured, uninsured, or underinsured. All thirty patients in the study have multiple myeloma.
“These patients have problems with their bones because the tumor can eat away at their bones, their calcium levels. The antibodies can cause problems with their kidneys, a whole host of problems that can occur with multiple myeloma,” Dr. Mims said.
Zella Duckworth and Javier Perez both agreed to enroll when they had horrible symptoms, and they weren’t responding to other treatments.
“I was in bad pain. I had to stop working. In my back and my whole body, just in pain, could barely walk. My children had to take me when I needed to go,” Duckworth described. “Then I got to where [treatment] wasn’t working.”
SUGGESTED: Cutting-edge tool ‘liquifies,’ destroys liver cancer tumor
“I can’t go back to work because I can’t function so I can’t get insurance,” Perez explained. “There were no options.”
However, after just one injection of the T-cells...
“I’ve had tests after tests and they don’t see it anymore,” Duckworth said relieved.
NATIONAL HEALTH NEWS: Huge cuts in National Institutes of Health research funding go before a federal judge
“I forgot what it feels like just to be normal,” Perez said. “I’m blessed.”
While they’re had amazing results and the cancer seems gone for now, this treatment is inaccessible for many patients.
“It’s just a one-time treatment because it’s in your body, right? It’s there for good. So, it’s a one-time treatment, and it is about half a million dollars,” Dr. Lulla said. “The good news is health insurance will pay for it because it’s FDA-approved. It is for that gap patient, where you don’t have insurance or are underinsured, where programs like an expanded access program that the company will bear the cost of it would be helpful.”
What are expanded access programs?
“One of the companies that makes a CAR T-cell product does offer it to patients who don’t have health insurance and will cover the cost of the drug,” Dr. Lulla explained. “My hope is that more companies will look upon that as an example and say, ‘okay, well, we know that there are patients who could be cured with this therapeutic and we want to offer it to everybody and so we will make arrangements to have it free or at cost to those patients.’ So, seeing this example, hopefully others will follow suit. In that way the access can broaden, which is really our goal.”
“We do the best we can without that therapy. But it’s better to have it, obviously,” Dr. Mims said.
MORE HEALTH-RELATED NEWS COVERAGE
The doctors believe this would save more lives of patients like Duckworth and Perez. Both of them are back to walking, exercising, and feeling good.
“I don’t take any meds. I’m back going to the gym. I’m walking,” Duckworth said. “I’m a whole lot, 100% better than what I was.”
The plan moving forward, is to open the next trial for lymphoma patients. Following that, Dr. Mims said they’re working with a pharma company for leukemia.
