Every few weeks, Jerry Stieneke travels to the Prairie Center in Sioux Falls for his cancer treatment. He has a squamous cell carcinoma of the tongue.
Since this is a recurrence of a head and neck cancer for Jerry, he had a couple options when it came to treatment.
“It’s either surgery and lose a decent amount of the tongue or go on treatments that are thought to be more palliative, keeping you alive for awhile but not cured or consider going on this clinical trial,” said Avera head and neck surgeon, William Spanos, MD.
Qualifying For a Clinical Trial
He qualified for a clinical trial that combines immunotherapy and targeted light activation of selective immunotherapy in the tumor.
“Even if the patient wants to participate in a clinical trial, they have to meet certain eligibility, and that’s set forth by the trial just to make sure it is as safe as possible for them,” said research coordinator, Brenna O’Bryan.
“I had to qualify for it so that took four to five weeks to complete all the protocols for the program and luckily enough I qualified,” said Stieneke.
How Does the Clinical Trial Work?
“The current clinical trial protocol uses a common immunotherapy agent, used for head and neck cancer patients who have recurrent or metastatic disease. So the patients receive an infusion of that and then closer to the time of their actual treatment, they receive an infusion of another antibody,” said Spanos.
That is then activated when you shine a light on it.
“We put needles into the tumor and there’s these little laser fibers that you put in and you activate the laser and it shines light and activates the antibody therapy just in that local area. It takes about five to 10 minutes,” said Spanos.
The next time Jerry went in for treatment, they did a biopsy beforehand, which ended up providing positive information.
“The last few biopsies have been stone cold negative, no cancer left,” said Spanos. “We are no longer doing the light therapy treatments, those can always be restarted again if the tumor starts to grow back but from what we can tell with our examination, the biopsy, and the scan is we can’t see there’s any cancer left, which is exciting.”
He will now continue with immunotherapy treatments.
“I feel blessed. I had a feeling when I started that it would work but I didn’t think it would work this fast,” said Stieneke.
Collaborative Cancer Care
Clinical trials often involve others across different disciplines so using a team approach aims to get the best outcomes for patients.
“We all have our role, Dr. Spanos and his team of head and neck surgeons work together with us in medical oncology and we in turn work with radiation oncology so it’s a very collaborative environment for practice and taking care of patients,” said Avera medical oncologist, Benjamin Solomon, MD.
“There’s a lot of clinical trials open at Avera, different diseases, different cancer types. Patients can ask their provider if they are interested in participating in a clinical trial, to see if there are any available for them,” said O’Bryan.
Avera was the first to open this clinical trial in the United States as well as the first to enroll a patient. Avera is also a top enroller in this study. Learn more about clinical trials.
