REDMOND -
For more information on the study contact (720) 848-0392 or logon to http://www.uch.edu/conditions/cancer/index1.aspx
From Bill Wixey: When I battled cancer last year, I was treated with a standard dose of chemotherapy and radiation, and it worked. My cancer disappeared. About the same time I started treatment, Redmond's Andy Hill was diagnosed with Stage 3 lung cancer. A serious and often deadly form of cancer, that actually spread after he underwent chemo and radiation. So, Andy went looking for something, anything, that might save his life. And he might have just found it.
It sounds so basic, but Andy Hill loves the sound of his breath. The gentle inhale and exhale as he jogs down his street in Redmond's Novelty Hill. His breath is precious to him because just a few months ago, he didn't think he'd ever do this again.
His breath was taken away, stolen from him. You see, Andy has lung cancer.
"When they said it was lung cancer, it was just a complete shock," Andy says. "Never smoked a day in my life. Been very active and athletic... eat well. Take good care of myself."
Not just lung cancer, an aggressive one. Even after chemo, and radiation, it spread to the other lung. A devastating, and potentially deadly development, but Andy, and his family, refused to lose hope.
"At a certain point you realize, it is what it is and we're gonna fight it," Andy says.
They fought it by gathering as much information as they could.
"I just gotta keep working to find that bullet.. The bullet that works."
And through his doctor at the Seattle Cancer Care Alliance, he found that bullet. An an experimental pill with a clumsy name: PF02341066. But andy calls it something else.
"It's a small miracle. it really is," Andy says.
He started taking it as part of a trial four months ago. Instead of going through the invasive chemo and radiation regimen, he just takes a pill. And he says after taking the pill for a week, all of his symptoms disappeared.
The chest pains and the coughing are gone. He no longer struggles to climb stairs. He doesn't look like a cancer patient, and doesn't act like one either. He can go for a run. He can play soccer again.
"It's a miracle," Andy's wife Molly says. "Seeing him being able to do all these things again, is juust amazing."
"And right now, I'm 100%. I'm right back to doing all the things i was doing before", Andy says.
How is it possible? This pill targets a specific mutation in Andy's cancer cells, called ALK.
Dr. Robert Doebele, with the University of Colorado Hospital is one of the chief researchers in this trial. "If you have a certain abnormality in a gene, we may be able to give you a drug that targets that abnormal gene," Doebele says.
Unlike chemotherapy, which scorches every cell, good and bad, the pill is like a key that will only fit this certain lock.
Andy takes two pills, twelve hours apart, twice a day, and the cancer's going away.
From Bill Wixey: When I battled cancer last year, I was treated with a standard dose of chemotherapy and radiation, and it worked. My cancer disappeared. About the same time I started treatment, Redmond's Andy Hill was diagnosed with Stage 3 lung cancer. A serious and often deadly form of cancer, that actually spread after he underwent chemo and radiation. So, Andy went looking for something, anything, that might save his life. And he might have just found it.
It sounds so basic, but Andy Hill loves the sound of his breath. The gentle inhale and exhale as he jogs down his street in Redmond's Novelty Hill. His breath is precious to him because just a few months ago, he didn't think he'd ever do this again.
His breath was taken away, stolen from him. You see, Andy has lung cancer.
"When they said it was lung cancer, it was just a complete shock," Andy says. "Never smoked a day in my life. Been very active and athletic... eat well. Take good care of myself."
Not just lung cancer, an aggressive one. Even after chemo, and radiation, it spread to the other lung. A devastating, and potentially deadly development, but Andy, and his family, refused to lose hope.
"At a certain point you realize, it is what it is and we're gonna fight it," Andy says.
They fought it by gathering as much information as they could.
"I just gotta keep working to find that bullet.. The bullet that works."
And through his doctor at the Seattle Cancer Care Alliance, he found that bullet. An an experimental pill with a clumsy name: PF02341066. But andy calls it something else.
"It's a small miracle. it really is," Andy says.
He started taking it as part of a trial four months ago. Instead of going through the invasive chemo and radiation regimen, he just takes a pill. And he says after taking the pill for a week, all of his symptoms disappeared.
The chest pains and the coughing are gone. He no longer struggles to climb stairs. He doesn't look like a cancer patient, and doesn't act like one either. He can go for a run. He can play soccer again.
"It's a miracle," Andy's wife Molly says. "Seeing him being able to do all these things again, is juust amazing."
"And right now, I'm 100%. I'm right back to doing all the things i was doing before", Andy says.
How is it possible? This pill targets a specific mutation in Andy's cancer cells, called ALK.
Dr. Robert Doebele, with the University of Colorado Hospital is one of the chief researchers in this trial. "If you have a certain abnormality in a gene, we may be able to give you a drug that targets that abnormal gene," Doebele says.
Unlike chemotherapy, which scorches every cell, good and bad, the pill is like a key that will only fit this certain lock.
Andy takes two pills, twelve hours apart, twice a day, and the cancer's going away.
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