Immunotherapy sends Stage IV Cancer patient into Complete Remission
The first time Aleksey asked for help for his shoulder pain, back in July 2018, he thought it was a sports injury caused by his parachute acrobatics. But after Aleksey did an MRI on his own initiative, it turned out that the cause of the pain was a completely different and much more serious one.
He had multiple bone metastases, and the tumor process had already spread to the retroperitoneal lymph nodes. Oddly enough, no other symptoms were noted at that time, and it was difficult to believe that it was a life-threatening condition. Quickly enough, it was possible to establish the primary focus of the malignant tumor: a high level of PSA and biopsy data indicated that Aleksey had prostate cancer, which managed to give extensive metastases.
Aleksey was prescribed a standard treatment protocol in Ukraine: hormonal and radionuclide therapy aimed at destroying bone metastases. During treatment, the PSA level decreased significantly and amounted to only 0.07 ng/ml by December 2018. Clinical manifestations of the disease at that moment were also absent. However, signs of an active process in the prostate gland and in the right rib were visualized on PET CT. Numerous lesions were also present in other bones (including in the spine, ribs, and pelvic bones).
At that time, none of the doctors undertook to help Aleksey. Authoritative expert oncologists from Germany, Austria, and Israel, unanimously argued that in this situation we could only talk about extending life, but not about recovery. The only one who believed that not everything was lost was Professor Shimon Slavin, a cancer immunologist and specialist in cell therapy. Professor Slavin has developed a number of original methods for treating cancer, even in the late stages of the tumor process. Today, these techniques are practiced in different countries of the world and, thanks to their effectiveness, have won the trust of oncologists, who at first treated them with a degree of skepticism.
In December 2018, Aleksey turned to the Biotherapy International clinic in Tel Aviv to Professor Shimon Slavin in search of a more effective and innovative treatment method. A few weeks later, in January 2019, Aleksey began to receive a course of metronomic therapy, which blocked the activity of regulatory T cells. Additionally, he has prescribed immunotherapy with checkpoint inhibitors. For this purpose, Yervoy and Opdivo drugs were used. Their combination, as shown by the clinical experience of Professor Slavin, is more effective than using each of them individually. Immunotherapy courses continued until the end of April 2019, along with one of them, targeted therapy (bioagent) was also carried out.
By May 2019, according to the control diagnostics, complete remission was achieved. Thus, in the framework of PET CT with PSMA, no tumor foci were detected in the prostate, and all foci in the bones showed a lack of metabolic activity. The PSA level was 0.013 ng/ml.
At this stage, Aleksey’s treatment did not stop. Despite a complete remission, Professor Slavin prescribed a second course of radionuclide therapy (using the strontium-89 isotope), hormone therapy and immunotherapy. Then a break was made until October 2019, but during this time Aleksey remained under observation and underwent diagnostic checks.
Later, in order to consolidate the positive effect of immunotherapy, Professor Slavin prescribed cell therapy to Aleksey, through the application of allogeneic T-killer lymphocytes. These target residual invisible cancer cells resistant to cytostatic and targeted drugs. Adaptive Cell therapy with T-lymphocytes was carried out in a satellite of the clinic in Germany and continued until the end of October 2019.
Today, for a little more than 1 year, Aleksey has been in complete stable remission. With such a late stage of cancer, which was discovered in Aleksey, this achievement can be regarded as a real medical miracle. The patient himself claims that he feels great.