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"Well, here goes. I hope this works." The 28-year-old woman gingerly stepped out of her car and looked up into the kind face of the attendant helping her. A once vibrant mother of two small children who enjoyed an active and fulfilling life, Alice was now a different person. She was weak, in a wheelchair, and her face was barely recognizable due to all she had been through. With a rare form of lymphoma, she had exhausted all treatment options and was now under hospice care. And yet, her doctor informed her he had recently found a ray of hope for her.
"Welcome to the NIH Clinical Center," the attendant smiled. "Let me help you get started."
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The ray of hope came from Martin Gutierrez, a staff doctor with the NCI's Medical Oncology Branch. Dr. Gutierrez specializes in researching new treatments for the type of cancer Alice had been diagnosed with, T-cell lymphoma. Through NCI's RAID program, which brings new anticancer treatments from the lab to patients, Dr. Gutierrez was able to give her a new drug that was under development. RAID stands for Rapid Access to Intervention Development. After receiving the experimental drug, within a few doses, there was improvement, and within seven months, Alice's symptoms were gone. A year after she arrived at the Clinical Center, her tests showed no signs of cancer.
The drug used by Dr. Gutierrez had been created by a drug company to prevent cancer, but had never gone to market. Researchers in California, funded by NCI, developed it as a chemotherapeutic drug, and brought it to the RAID program. Through this program, NCI can look at treatments that may not have done well commercially due to external factors. RAID offers the opportunity to further develop promising approaches for the prevention, detection, and treatment of cancer, thereby offering hope to patients like Alice.
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