New melanoma treatment records success in HonorHealth clinical trial

For the first time in Arizona, a patient with extensive melanoma cancer was successfully treated outside a clinical trial at HonorHealth Research Institute with a new type of immunotherapy known as tumor infiltrating lymphocytes.

Melanoma is an aggressive cancer associated with melanin, the pigment that helps protect the body from excessive ultraviolet light, either from the sun or tanning beds, a press release explained.

While melanoma may start on the skin, it often metastasizes, or spreads, to other parts of the body.

Three years ago, Tena Hughes, 54 and a lifelong Phoenix resident, was about to board a plane for Uganda to fulfill a dream of seeing critically endangered mountain gorillas in the wilds of Africa, the release detailed.

However, when a COVID-19 test came back positive, she was forced to stay home. She didn’t know it at the time, but she would later attribute that test to saving her life, according to the release.

Weeks later, Hughes began suffering excruciating headaches. An exam in February 2021 showed she had several late-stage melanoma tumors that had spread from an unknown origin to her brain.

Subsequent scans would show the cancer had also spread to her spleen and left lung.

“I’d never seen it on my skin,” Hughes stated in the release.

Over the next three years, she had numerous surgeries, radiation treatments and anti-cancer drugs to rid herself of the melanoma. She did not tolerate the drug therapy well and had to discontinue it. Eventually, the cancer would return and continue to spread, according to the release.

It was during lung surgery that Hughes’s doctor told her that if she didn’t get on a comprehensive treatment plan, the cancer would continue to come back. The surgeon suggested that Hughes see Dr. Justin Moser, a melanoma specialist conducting clinical trials at HonorHealth Research Institute.

“(Dr. Moser) is the first doctor who gave me hope,” Hughes, who underwent TIL treatment in June, stated.

TILs are part of the body’s natural immune system. They can recognize and fight specific tumors. Like tired soldiers, TIL cells can eventually weaken and begin losing the battle against the cancer, according to the release.

In TIL therapy, thousands of these cells are taken from a tumor. In a laboratory, they are enhanced and multiplied, creating millions of fortified immune cells that are then infused back into the patient, creating a resurgent “army” to fight the cancer.

Melanoma tumors already shrinking

Almost instantly after the TIL treatment, Hughes’s tumors began shrinking, the release stated.

“Tena tolerated treatment well,” Dr. Moser stated in the release. “Within two days after receiving her TIL infusion, her tumors started shrinking, which is consistent with quick, durable responses associated with TIL therapy.”

Based on clinical trials conducted at the research institute, which led to FDA approval in February, Dr. Moser said that they know responses to TIL can be durable, with about half of all responses lasting two or more years.

Hughes’s treatment was the first commercial use of TIL in Arizona, following the FDA’s approval, according to the release.

Interestingly, Hughes has actually been waiting for TIL therapy for nearly three years. Soon after she was initially diagnosed, she scrambled to learn all she could about her disease, eventually discovering a book, “Life Force,” about potential futuristic medical cures, including TIL therapy, the release detailed.

“I just dog-eared every chapter in that book,” she stated. “I told myself, ‘If I stay alive long enough, this is going to be available to me.’ As fate would have it, it was.”

For more about HonorHealth Research Institute cancer clinical trials, contact 480-323-1350.