CeGaT Personalized Vaccine
Glioblastoma has an abysmal prognosis and while I do not look at my experience with the disease through the lens of statistics, I know I need to take matter in my own hands. I chose to pursue the vaccine treatment in Germany because it provides a personalized solution to my tumor. It is a treatment that uses a patient's specific tumor mutations to create a vaccine which triggers his or her own immune system to kill cancer cells (these normally evade detection by the immune system).
Multiple renowned brain tumor clinics at Duke University and the Mayo Clinic have been working with the CeGaT company in Germany for several years to connect patients with this gene-based vaccine treatment.
Similar treatments are available in the United States and they have shown promise, but only as part of clinical trials. Unfortunately, my current condition and medications would preclude me from enrolling in any of these trials. And I would risk receiving a placebo (no treatment) if I enrolled in one of these randomized control trials.
Dr. Saskia Biskup, the founder of CeGaT is an MD, PhD and she devised the gene-based personalized vaccine treatment. She has been treating patients since 2013, having treated well over 100 patients with advanced cancers including pancreatic, ovarian and brain cancer. Many of these patients with such aggressive cancers were given very guarded survival prognoses. Dr. Biskup has seen very high response rates in these patients, many of whom are in remission or cancer free and almost all still alive years after treatment. Specifically, a few patients with multifocal GBM (like mine) have seen their tumors disappear.
So I am choosing to pursue this hopeful avenue. This will entail monthly trips to Germany over the course of two years and it is an expensive option requiring upfront payment (albeit less expensive than any clinical trial in the US).
