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The quest to extend the reach of checkpoint inhibitors in lung cancer
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Robert Carlson enjoys his new lease of life.Credit: Peter Baker
For Robert Carlson, a former slot-machine attendant from Hebron, Connecticut, 18 months of chemotherapy was harsh enough to make death seem inviting. Then the drug stopped working.
His doctor tried him on another treatment for his non-small-cell lung cancer (NSCLC), but it didn’t last long. “It was supposed to knock the hell out of the cancer, but it knocked the hell out of me, too,” says Carlson, now 74, who had hoped that his long-distance running would counteract his half-century of smoking. His doctor told him he was out of treatment options, so “I said all my goodbyes and made all my amends,” Carlson says.
Then a doctor at nearby Yale New Haven Hospital got him into a clinical trial for an experimental immunotherapy drug. Carlson had no serious side effects, his tumours shrank and he kept on living.
Source: Nature