A New Jersey woman, who was given only months to live after receiving a fatal brain cancer diagnosis, experienced a miracle when she was offered the chance to try a new cell therapy.
Two years later, 65-year-old Pamela Goldberger is alive, healthy, and thriving after making the decision, following surgery, to take part in a clinical trial using dendritic cell therapy, Fox News reported.
In 2023, Goldberger was diagnosed with glioblastoma, a cancer that has a survival rate of 14 to 16 months, even with surgery.
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She said at the time, she felt her whole world was shaken and time stopped.
"It's pretty devastating news to hear," Pamela said. "I don't know what I thought was happening, but that wasn't it … Our world just stopped."
"We have two little grandchildren, and [I thought] I was never going to have the opportunity to see them grow up. I think that's as devastating as it gets,” she added.
After the MRI showed she had brain cancer, she was admitted to the hospital and scheduled for surgery, which has been the standard treatment for the invasive cancer, Fox noted.
Following her surgery, the head of neurosurgery at Cooper University Hospital in Camden, New Jersey, gave her the option to try something different, and she decided to give it a shot.
The report noted:
He invited Goldberger to consider joining a clinical trial for an individualized dendritic cell therapy that could help treat glioblastoma, and she agreed to participate.
After the surgery, Goldberger began six weeks of chemotherapy and radiation, and then started six weeks of the investigational cell therapy a few weeks later. That process was followed by another year of chemo maintenance.
The healing process wasn't fast, but eventually she started feeling better.
Dr. Joseph Georges, a neurosurgeon at Banner University Hospital in Phoenix, Arizona, who led the clinical trial, said that in twenty years, the treatment for the fatal brain cancer hadn't changed.
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"It's a highly mutated tumor and there are different cell populations for each patient," Georges said. "And the tumor is also very good at silencing the body's immune system from attacking it."
"We're picking up all these various tumor cell types, and then we're teaching the immune system how to attack the tumor — even the small cells that evade surgical resection," he added about how the new treatment works.
The report went on:
The treatment, which uses dendritic cells taken from patients, was administered to 16 people between 47 and 73 years old who were newly diagnosed with glioblastoma, including Goldberger.
After undergoing chemo and radiation, the patients received three courses of the injection every two weeks, along with weekly injections of a pegylated interferon medication (a type of protein that helps regulate the immune system).
The phase 1 clinical trial showed positive results overall, with researchers noting "improved survival" and "positive immune responses" after treatment, per a press release from Diakonos Oncology, the group that developed the treatment.
"At best, we hope to keep it stable and hope that we don't see it grow, but we are actually seeing tumors disappear for some of these people on their MRIs," Georges said, which is "something you don't see in glioblastoma. It's truly amazing."
Georges recommended that other glioblastoma patients seek out clinical trial opportunities if available and appropriate, sharing that the trial will be at 20 sites around the country.
A second release from Diakonos Oncology announced that a phase 2 clinical trial was underway, with the first patient dosed.
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