msargent1

Gavin – Thanks for the welcome and quick response! My dad was diagnosed with cholangiocarconoma about a month ago, and has started on the standard protocol of gemcitabine plus cisplatin. His re-staging date is mid-august. Anyway, I’ve been trying to come up to speed as fast as possible, and it appears there isn’t as much attention paid to this disease as some of the other cancers, so I’m now generally focused on immunotherapy. I have seen the links above, and I’m extremely happy for Melinda! Since my dad is 78, he falls outside the range for the TIL therapy, but a cancer researcher said you can sometimes appeal this on compassionate care grounds. I haven’t tried that yet, but have really focused on the checkpoint inhibitor drugs. They gotten good result on Melanoma, and I know they are starting to try these drugs on other cancers, but other than the lady at UCSF, who is on an experimental anti PDL-1 drug, I haven’t really seen anyone on this site involved in PD-1 or CTLA-1 trials.

My dad is currently going to a hospital in Atlanta, and his current doctor doesn’t appear very interested in trials, so I’m trying to get him into MD Anderson. I actually live in Dallas, so MD Anderson is within 4 hrs of my house, and I can move my dad out here and get his treatment there. My backup plan is to get him into Emory in Atlanta.

By the way, if anyone is interested, I found a couple of links discussing checkpoint drugs … the focus is on Melanoma, but it is being pushed out to other types of cancer:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XGeqAEr1RnE

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5rzWQ0tE7lQ

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b7TH3W_PW1s