‘I am so happy to be alive’: Cancer patient hails new drug treatment

A grandmother has made a “miraculous” response to serious head and neck cancer after receiving a breakthrough immunotherapy drug from team of Scottish doctors.

Eileen Williamson 71, has made a remarkable recovery from the serious cancer which threatened her life.

Cancer care jointly given by the maxillofacial head and neck team and the Beatson oncology centre halted stage 3 cancer which had spread from her tongue to her neck.

The retired hotel events manager explained that the malignancy started as a mouth ulcer that refused to heal.

It went undetected until she was referred to maxillofacial surgeon Professor Jim McCaul. He told her only two treatment options offered any chance of survival.

The Bridge of Allan mum said: “I had to choose between having my tongue removed and rebuilt with tissue from another part of my body or undergoing a trial of a new immunotherapy drug.

“Even with surgery to remove my tongue, I was still left with an uncertain chance of recovery.

“I opted for the drug trial.”

The drug, pembrolizumab, gives the immune system the opportunity to seek out tumours and generate anti-tumour immunity.

Cancers in the head and neck are notoriously difficult to deal with. More than half those diagnosed with advanced head and neck malignancy die within five years.

Professor McCaul, a UK leading maxillofacial surgeon at Glasgow’s Queen Elizabeth University Hospital (QEUH), said: “Mrs Williamson has had an incredible response to pembrolizumab.

“Eileen presented with advanced stage disease and only a major operation to remove the cancer filling her tongue and lymph glands from both sides of her neck would offer hope of cure – until now.

“She would then need to be given radiation treatment as well as the surgery to offer any hope of cure.

“Information from our surgical team here at QEUH shows that only 20% of patients with advanced disease spread to both sides of the neck survive for two years.

“This is despite 21st-Century advanced surgery to remove the cancer, reconstruction and radiation treatments.”

Professor McCaul added that her immune system and tumour response to the drug have been remarkable, giving a great deal of hope that this new treatment can benefit more patients.

Eileen was treated under a trial being offered by Prof McCaul’s former workplace, the Royal Marsden cancer hospital in London.

He worked with Beatson consultant oncologist Dr Saurabh Vohra.

He added that currently the information they have shows that this approach will not work for every patient, but the treatment gives doctors the best hope for improved results in decades.

“The new information from the trial Mrs Williamson underwent shows that giving this drug before and then after standard major surgery and radiotherapy reduces cancer events.

“This is the best progress we have seen for this steadily increasing disease in the last 20 years.”

Three years after her diagnosis Eileen says she is hugely grateful for the chance to go on the research trial. She was one of only 350 advanced head and neck cancer patients in the UK eligible to be admitted.

“I am so happy to be alive. I feel incredibly lucky to have accessed the trial and honestly don’t know if I would be alive today without it.

“My surgeon Professor McCaul, my Beatson oncologist Dr Saurabh Vohra, and the cancer nurses at the QEUH and Beatson have all saved my life.

“My family are overjoyed.

“I just needed to live for my husband Martin, son and daughter and two grandchildren.”

She described accepting the diagnosis and facing treatment.

“There is no point in feeling overwhelmed or scared by stage 3 cancer because that does not help you survive it.

“You must comply with everything your surgeon and oncology team tell you.

“It was a long journey involving maxillofacial surgery and weeks in an oncology ward.

“I now hope my experience offers others the confidence to go through advanced head and neck cancer treatment today.”

Survival has meant a recent holiday with her daughter and granddaughter to Portugal while husband Martin stayed home and held the fort.

The immunotherapy drug has shown positive results for other patients.

It had doubled the length of time patients were cancer-free, on average, from around two and a half years to five years.

After three years, patients given pembrolizumab had a 10% lower risk of their cancer returning elsewhere in the body.

The trial involved 192 hospitals in 24 countries, and was led by Washington University Medical School in St Louis, Missouri, and funded by drug company MSD.

About 12,800 head and neck cancer cases are diagnosed in the UK every year. Mortality rates are projected to rise by 12% in the UK by 2040.