PITTSBURGH — A new clinical trial working to light up cancer cells that were never detected before, and it’s showing promising results and putting Pittsburgh on the map.
Matthew Marten thought he was living free after beating appendix cancer, but in 2022, it was back and Stage 4.
“Basically, told my family that I had a couple years to live and that was about it,” Marten said.
While living in Minneapolis, Marten had some of the best surgical care available, but four more doctors told him the same thing: his cancer was inoperable.
That is until he got a reference through a Facebook support group that led him to Pittsburgh.
“With this clinical trial, they were able to identify areas that they didn’t see on a scan. There were areas in my bladder in my rectum,” Marten said.
It was an opportunity to get his surgery and all the cancer in his abdominal cavity. He was part of Phase 2 of the OncoNano cancer clinical trial at Allegheny Health Network.
The doctors inject the patient a day before the surgery with a fluorescent agent that lights up the cancer cells.
“The agent was to aid the surgeon in finding any lesions that may have been missed because there could be thousands of small tumors or sometimes subtle ones that have been treated and don’t look as obvious,” said Dr. Patrick Wagner with Allegheny Health Network.
If approved out of clinical testing, this agent could reduce the time doctors spend searching for more cancers and the number of surgeries a patient might have to endure.
“It surprised me because it wasn’t just my sight but a number of sights with experienced surgeons that do this work a lot and even with that group of investigators it was still about 50 percent of the patients there was more residual cancer left than we would have seen with the naked eye,” Wagner said.
Marten is thankful for the opportunity to participate in what could be groundbreaking science, but he’s also thankful to just live another day.
“It feels amazing just amazing. Just time with family and friends it just feels really good, but I also knew in the back of my head when they said that I wasn’t done,” Marten said.
The next step is for the company to either present to the FDA for approval of the florescent agent or move to Phase 3 of the trial.
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