Brain Surgeon Beats Cancer Odds
Sam Hassenbusch is a loving husband, father and grandfather. He's also a brain surgeon at the MD Anderson Cancer Center in Houston who was diagnosed nearly two years ago with a deadly brain tumor called a glioblastoma.
He got all the standard treatment: surgery followed by radiation and chemotherapy, CBS Evening News anchor Katie Couric reports. Then he volunteered for a clinical trial.
"If there's something new, try it on me. If it works, that's great. If it doesn't, well, that's why I've devoted my life to medicine," Hassenbusch says. "It was really swinging for the fences."
According to the National Cancer Institute, there are more than 4,000 government-funded clinical studies to fight cancer. You can find out about them by going to the Cancer.gov Web site.
Once you get there, click on "clinical trials," and then choose the first link on the list. You'll be asked what type of cancer you have, how far advanced it is, and where in the country you're willing to go for treatment. Another click, this time on "search," will reveal which treatments are a good match and how experimental they actually are.
"When you have a deadly disease such as this, patients really do need to be in clinical trials because that's where the cutting-edge medical therapy is," says Dr. Amy Heimberger of MD Anderson Cancer Center.
When Hassenbusch was diagnosed, Heimberger was already developing an experimental treatment, an injection that attacks cancer cells that have a particular protein that fuels a glioblastoma's rapid growth. Less than 50 percent of all glioblastomas have it, and Hassenbusch was lucky his did.
Heimberger and her study partner, John Sampson at Duke University, had found that patients who were given the shot — a kind of immunotherapy — lived twice as long as those who only had chemo.
"So, it really did come down to, well, are we going to give him the chemo? Are we going to give him the immunotherapy?," Heimberger explains.
"I said to her, 'Well, can I do both?' and she said, 'Well, nobody's ever done this before for brain tumors,'" Hassenbusch says. "And I said, 'Don't worry about it. Look, just think of me as a six-foot-large research rat. And just go ahead and just do whatever you would do to a rat.'"
Hassenbusch has defied expectations by surviving this long. He's able to ride his motorcycle to work every day. Although he is no longer operating, he still consults on cases — and he's paved the way for 11 others to join the same clinical trial, with possibly 100 more to come this spring.
"This is not necessarily a cure, but this is certainly looks to be a promising step in the right direction for hope for these patients," Heimberger says.
His message to others facing a dire diagnosis: You don't have to be a brain surgeon like him to identify the right doctors and the right treatment.
"Buy yourself some plane tickets. Go to the leaders in the field and see what options are gonna come up. Don't just stay right where you are," Hassenbusch says.
This living science experiment has no intention of staying where he is. He plans not only to prolong his own life, but to inspire and save the lives of others who are following in his footsteps.