By the middle of her senior year at West Virginia University, Sharon Belvin knew something was wrong. The slim, blond 22-year-old was growing increasingly short of breath during her daily runs, but doctors couldn’t pinpoint the cause. Then, shortly before graduation, she discovered a hard lump beneath her left collarbone. A biopsy identified it as melanoma — the deadliest form of skin cancer, killing 10,000 Americans annually. Worse, a CT scan showed masses scattered throughout her chest. Belvin faced a crushing prognosis: For Stage IV metastatic melanoma, average survival is measured in months.
Still, she was determined to fight. In May 2004, she returned home to New Jersey, married her high school sweetheart and started chemotherapy at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center in New York City. The treatment caused debilitating nausea and neuropathy, but the shadows on her scans continued to multiply. That December, Belvin’s oncologist informed her that the cancer had spread to her brain.
After surgeons used radiation to burn away the tumor, she was switched to interleukin-2, a naturally occurring protein that, in high doses, sends the body’s immune defenses into overdrive. Although IL-2 triggers remission in a small percentage of patients, its side effects are often horrific. Belvin endured violent vomiting, peeling skin and episodes of delirium, but she didn’t get better. As the cancer filled her chest cavity with fluid, her hope began to drain away.
That’s when the oncologist told her about a clinical trial just getting underway, of a medication called ipilimumab. The drug’s mechanism of action was entirely new: Instead of attacking cancer cells (like chemo), or indiscriminately revving up the immune system (like IL-2), ipilimumab blocked a single receptor on one type of immune cell.
“Would you like to try it?” the doctor asked.
