Carl Stewart
In 1998, Carl Stewart was told he had only a short time to live after doctors found a large lymphoma tumor in his brain. The tumor likely stemmed from a kidney transplant from many years before. The post-transplant medication he had been taking to weaken his immune system and keep it from attacking the donated kidney had also enabled a virus called Epstein-Barr (EBV) to run rampant and lead to lymphoma.
When Stewart came to Ohio State’s Comprehensive Cancer Center – James Cancer Hospital and Solove Research Institute (OSUCCC – James), he enrolled in an antiviral drug therapy clinical trial led by Michael Caligiuri, MD, whose laboratory, along with collaborators at OSU, had devised an animal model of human central nervous system (CNS) lymphoma. Researchers hypothesized that novel drug therapies targeting EBV and lymphoma cells in the lab could be explored in humans with EBV and primary CNS lymphoma.
“Dr. Caligiuri said I’d be the first patient with transplant-related primary CNS lymphoma to undergo this therapy,” Stewart says. “I jumped at the chance.” Less than a year later, the tumor was gone, and Stewart remains cancer-free – a prime example of a patient benefiting from innovative, science-based treatment.
Linda Craig
The latest and most sophisticated forms of cancer treatment are offered to qualifying patients who participate in clinical trials, or studies designed to test the effectiveness of promising new therapies. A case in point is Linda Craig, who agreed to enter a clinical trial at the OSUCCC – James after being diagnosed with breast cancer.
“I felt a strong need to do this because I have two grown daughters, and if I could save them from going through what I had to go through, then I wanted to do that,” Craig says, noting that she put a lot of thought into her decision and realized that new treatments will come about only through research-based clinical studies.
“There’s no way we’ll ever find out about new treatments unless people step to the plate and say, ‘Yes, I am going to do this’," Craig explains. "Because I chose to take part in a clinical trial at The James, I truly believe I received the best treatment there is to have.”
