NEW YORK – Many lung cancer patients who have never smoked and don't work around toxic chemicals or carcinogens have been found to have a defective gene that drives their cancer.
A therapy approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration is now targeting what doctors call ALK positive cancer and helping push patients toward remission.
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Two years ago, Bruce Dunbar's life was flipped upside down.
What doctors first thought was asthma or pneumonia was finally diagnosed as stage four lung cancer. The cancer had spread to his spine and his brain.
"As it turns out, I had 26 lesions in my brain," Dunbar said.
Dunbar never smoked. His doctors determined he had a gene mutation driving the cancer.
"Bruce wound up having something called an ALK rearrangement, which is a mutation, different parts of the chromosome fused together, and fortunately, that has amazing drugs now," said Dr. Brendon Stiles, thoracic surgeon at NewYork-Presbyterian/Weill Cornell Medical Center.
In fact, just one month before Dunbar was diagnosed, the FDA approved Alecensa and his oncologist prescribed the drug four pills twice a day.
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More than 20 months later, Dunbar has just three tumors in his brain. The tumor in his lung is only one-tenth of what it used to be.
"In November of 2017 when I was diagnosed I wasn't sure I was going to live, let alone get back in a pool again," Dunbar said.
Doctors said eventually the drug will stop working and the cancer will regrow.
The hope is that the targeted therapy works long enough for researchers to refine the next generation of the drug, or add another treatment, like immunotherapy to keep Dunbar going.
Bruce said he has had some minimal side effects from the drug, including fatigue, weight gain and a suppressed heart rate.