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The biggest "evil" of cancer is that it continues to recur and metastasize, eventually causing patients to take their lives due to systemic failure of multiple organs.
Lung cancer is still currently the top three in the world in incidence, with a large number of patients. How to avoid further recurrence/metastasis to the greatest extent is a concern for both doctors and patients.
The two most common types of lung cancer are mainly lung squamous cell carcinoma and lung adenocarcinoma, both of which are non-small cell lung cancers. Lung squamous cell carcinoma is mainly related to smoking, common in middle-aged and elderly men, and has been the most common pathological type of lung cancer in the past few decades, but in recent years, the incidence of lung adenocarcinoma has gradually increased or even exceeded the trend of squamous cell carcinoma.
Lung adenocarcinoma has different biological characteristics from squamous cell carcinoma, lung adenocarcinoma itself grows more slowly, and the lesion is generally not large when it is found, but it is more likely to metastasize. Lung adenocarcinoma cells have a high degree of metastatic properties, and it is often found in the clinic that the primary foci of many lung adenocarcinomas are small, but metastasis has occurred, which is often said in the clinic "small adenocarcinoma, large metastasis".
Once the metastasis of lung adenocarcinoma occurs, it is difficult to cure it simply by surgery, and it is generally treated clinically by chemotherapy or targeted therapy. However, maintaining the effect of "no recurrence and no transfer" is not ideal.
The following two cases are to share and discuss the third option with you - no chemotherapy is used, targeted therapy is applied for a short time, and most of the time is maintained by NKT cell immunotherapy. Today, one patient has not experienced any recurrence and metastasis for more than 7 years! The other one has been stable for 5 years!
Case 1
In August 2014, Mr. Wang was diagnosed with lung cancer and immediately underwent surgery. Postoperative pathology: invasive adenocarcinoma, acinar dominant type, moderate differentiation, positive vascular invasion, positive pleural invasion; (right upper lung) invasive adenocarcinoma, papillary dominant, low differentiation.
Patients with lung adenocarcinoma usually have genetic mutations and can be targeted therapy. After the operation, Mr. Wang did not take chemotherapy, but after genetic testing, he found that he had an EGFR mutation and took gefitinib targeted drug therapy for 4 months.
Chemotherapy is a systemic treatment, usually carried out after surgery (the role of preoperative neoadjuvant chemotherapy can refer to past science), killing tumor cells that may exist throughout the body but cannot be discovered, thereby reducing the risk of metastasis recurrence, but chemotherapy is an "indiscriminate attack" on the whole body, usually there are large side effects, and some patients cannot tolerate it. Since chemotherapy was not performed after the operation, Mr. Wang was not relieved. After many understandings, Mr. Wang and his family learned about Professor Zhang Minghui's NKT technology by Professor Zhang Minghui of Tsinghua University School of Medicine through the recommendation of friends, and consulted the demonstration cases of NKT cell therapy in detail, especially hoping to try to reduce the risk of tumor recurrence and delay the time of recurrence/metastasis.
2014.9 Mr. Wang began NKT cell immunotherapy, the initial regimen was 1 course/month, and after multiple follow-up visits, no signs of recurrence and metastasis were seen, and the treatment frequency was downgraded to 1 course/2 months. After 6 consecutive follow-up evaluations without any signs of relapsed metastasis, it has now been adjusted to 1 course/half year. In the 32 courses of treatment that were constantly changing and adjusting in 82 months, Mr. Wang repeatedly reviewed and evaluated the stability, and the overall mental and physical level was systematically improved.
Case 2
Mr. Li discovered the shadow of his right lung during his physical examination in October 2016 and underwent thoracoscopic resection of the upper lobe of his right lung in November, and the pathology showed that he was surrounded by infiltrative adenocarcinoma of the upper lobe of the right lung. Adenocarcinoma appears later than the common clinical manifestations of lung squamous cell carcinoma, but fortunately, Mr. Li found the tumor during the physical examination and staged earlier.
Like Mr. Wang, Mr. Li did not undergo chemotherapy after surgery, and genetic testing showed that there was no specific targeted drug, and there was neither chemotherapy nor corresponding targeted drugs after surgery, Mr. Li sought the NKT treatment team of Professor Zhang Minghui of Tsinghua University School of Medicine, hoping to reduce the risk of metastatic recurrence through NKT cell therapy after surgery. Mr. Li began NKT cell therapy in 2017, with a regimen of 1 course/2 months, with the main purpose of preventing relapse and metastasis, and the efficacy evaluation index was progression-free survival time (PFS).
As of June 2021, the patient had been treated through 26 courses of continuous systemic treatment, regularly reviewed lung CT, head and abdominal magnetic resonance, and did not see any clear signs of recurrence or metastasis for 20 consecutive months.
In recent years, with the development of molecular biology and tumor biology, immunotherapy applications have emerged, becoming another effective treatment method for tumors after surgery, radiotherapy and chemotherapy, and targeted therapy. NKT cell therapy is the use of powerful immune cells to kill those tumor cells that may remain in the body, and there are basically no side effects, and can be combined with targeted drugs and radiation therapy to reduce the risk of relapsed metastasis, so that patients can obtain long-term stability.
Popular science knowledge, for reference only, individual patients are subject to clinical treatment.