Xiao Jian is a 25 years old young man from an ordinary family in Anhui province. In the summer of 2012, symptoms like coughing, fever, chest discomfort or breathing difficulties occasionally happened to him. Xiao Jiang thought they were caused by catching a cold until one day he was hard to breathe after playing a short while in a basketball game. He tried several times, but he could never play for over an hour, which was so easy for him in the past. What was wrong with Xiao Jian?
During the national holidays, Xiao Jian told his parents about his abnormal symptoms, and he was taken to the hospital for a medical examination.
The test results came up with the diagnosis of central bronchogenic carcinoma (a type of lung cancer), and the worst part is that the appearance of multi-metastasis made surgery impossible, and this is like an announcement of Xiao Jian’s death penalty to Xiao Jian’s parents.
In the Chinese culture, people usually do not share with patient if he/she gets cancer. Xiao Jian realized that his condition was not so well, and he searched online for explanations of his test results including Tumor specific growth factor (TSGF), Carcinoembryonic antigen (CEA), Squamous cell carcinoma antigen (SCCAg) which were far beyond the normal range.
Xiao Jian’s parents were also seeking for solutions, in addition to surgery, radiotherapy and chemotherapy, they found a new term – DC-CTL cancer biological immunotherapy which they had no idea what it was at all. After a detailed explanation from the doctor, they wanted to give this cutting edge cancer treatment method a try.
The DC-CTL cancer immunotherapy requires to collect the mononuclearcells from patient’s peripheral blood, these cells will then be transported to the GMP lab for cultivation, induction and tumor antigen stimulations, the dendritic cells will become more matural with better cancer cell recognition ability, also the DC-CTL therapy increases the number of the killer cells inside patient’s body. These two types of cells will then be infused back to patient’s body intravenously to search for cancer cells and kill them, hence to achieve the goal of cancer treatment. At meanwhile, this cancer treatment method enhances patient’s immunity, it may remove the tumor cells left in the body after surgery, radiotherapy and chemotherapy, and it prevents from the recurrence, metastasis or progression of cancer.
Dr. Wang from the oncology department said, “It is hard to believe that the cancer immunotherapy worked so well on Xiao Jian who has such a serious lung cancer, it stopped the spread and growth of the cancer and the key figures related to lung cancer declined. We could never imagine such miracle would happen in the past. Patient gained confidence, and we will help him continue to fight against cancer.”