All fired up!

This morning I attended the Susan G. Komen Breast Cancer Foundation (now renamed Susan G. Komen for the Cure) Annual Meeting. It was fabulous to be around others committed to ending breast cancer, but here's the most exciting part:

One of the presenters was Dr. Dwight Randal, a truly brilliant guy who is on Komen's board. He talked about the work that one of his colleagues is doing to train the body to attack cancer, because the immune system doesn't work for cancer because the body sees the cancer as "self" and treats cancerous cells as "self" instead of as a foriegn body.

Well, to make a long story short, this doctor has a theory that if cells are retrained to see cancer as a foriegn body, the immune system will attack them.

The first patient started the first phase of the trial six weeks ago. She's dubbed "patient 001." Well, 001 is a late stage IV patient who has tried multiple therapies, including multiple cutting edge therapies, but nothing has worked, and the mass inside her chest is so large that scans can't see through it. The way Dr. Randal talked about it, she was lying on her deathbed. So, she tried this very new, very experimental therapy.

The result? Three weeks later, she was home. Her tumor shrunk 92% in that time. 92%!!!!!! I have never met this woman, but I could have cried from happiness with that number. Now it's six weeks later, and she's doing well; she'll have anther set of scans soon, but she feels good and she's at home.

Is this the cure? Or at least the cure for some part of the disease? We're a long way from knowing that. Patient 002 is starting the trial today, perhaps as I write this. Will her results be as good? Only time will tell. Here's what I know, though: good works are happening. We will find a cure, this one or another one. And Komen for the Cure is funding this kind of research. I am proud to affilliate myself with them, and proud to spend my time for them.

Kristina