After standard treatment options failed to arrest his metastatic melanoma, a clinical trial saved Oscar Izquierdo’s life – “a perfect example of the crucial role research plays in treating cancer,” says Bruno Bastos, M.D., at Baptist Health Miami Cancer Institute.
{TRANSCRIPT}: - My name is Bruno Bastos. I'm Medical Oncologist at the Miami Cancers Institute. The first time I saw Oscar Izquierdo was in April, 2019.
- They told me I had melanoma. Then the next thing that came in my mind is, is it, is it treatable? Is there a solution for it? And he said, we don't know but we're going to do everything we can in our power.
- At that moment, his condition was related to a metastatic cancer that has spread to many organs in his body.
- Well, I did radiation for 10 days and then from that I went to infusion, because the doctor that I had says that the chemo wasn't working, so he wanted to try something new.
- He was referred to my clinic at the Miami Institute for Evaluation for a clinical trial for an experimental therapeutics. The clinical trial was a phase one clinical trial. So phase one clinical trials, their main goal is to investigate the dosage and safety of the agent. Phase one clinical trial may be associated with a lot of side effects, which many times there're still unknown. So at that moment we had this conversation, but since the trial was very hopeful, he agreed to participate, since there was no responding to the current treatments available.
- It was, it spread. It spread to my brains and spread through my entire body and I had no idea how bad it was, and I was scared. I was scared. I was scared for my life. And ever since I got transferred to the new study here, and I got better day by day.
- At this moment, radiographically, we do not have any evidence of metabolic disease in his body. This case illustrates the importance of clinical trials, because in many times patients may not available treatments in the standard of care approach. A clinical trial may provide to the patient a way to receive a treatment for good clinical control over his disease, before the medication becomes approved. So it's a very hopeful time in oncology, when we have an institute such as the Miami Institute where many clinical trials are available. So patients can have access to drugs that are not yet approved and may be very hopeful in the future.
- I think I'm treated like, like I said, like if I was a celebrity sometimes because of the progress I have done. And they've been very, very good to me and very caring.
- The raise awareness focus research is very important because if we do not have clinical trials and we don't have patients that are willing to participate in these clinical trials, we will not be able to advance the science and have new drugs available for treatment for the cancer in our patients nowadays.
