By Marty Trieschmann
An experimental immunotherapy in Phase 1 Clinical Trials at the University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences (UAMS) Winthrop P. Rockefeller Cancer Institute has given a Little Rock man with resistant kidney cancer a complete remission.
Dwight Hamilton, 58, battled stage 4 renal cell carcinoma for four years. His cancer returned multiple times even after receiving all of the standard cancer treatments – surgery, chemotherapy, radiation and other immunotherapies.
Hamilton is cancer-free after receiving a promising new immunotherapy which was tested for the first time in humans exclusively at UAMS in Arkansas and at 45 other hospitals nationwide. Michael Birrer, M.D., Ph.D., director of the Winthrop P. Rockefeller Cancer Institute and UAMS vice chancellor, oversaw the study in the Phase 1 Cancer Clinical Trials Unit at UAMS, the only academic clinical trials unit in Arkansas focused solely on testing new, early phase cancer therapies.
