Stephen Basile

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Stephen was diagnosed with Large B Class Non Hodgkins Lymphoma Double Hit after finding a rapidly growing lump in his neck in late June 2018.
He quickly started chemo treatment with Shawnee Mission Medical Center and after consultation with his oncologist there, as well as an oncologist at Nebraska Medicine, decided on a treatment plan to include six rounds of Dose-adjusted EPOCH chemo therapy, then an autologous stem cell transplant.
After completing the six rounds of chemo therapy, assessment tests/scans in preparation for the stem cell transplant at KU Med indicated refractory lymphoma in the abdomen.
Given this circumstance, Steve entered a clinical trial (Zuma 7) which is a 1:1 for Standard of Care (more chemo and then auto stem transplant) or CAR-T therapy. For those unfamiliar with CAR-T, it is a treatment that involves removing the patient's T-cells which are not doing their job, re-engineering them to seek and destroy the patient's cancer cells, then returning them to the patient's body.  This is a clinical trial as up to this point, standard of care for CAR-T with this type of cancer is only offered after two failed lines of treament and this trial would be looking at CAR-T after one failed line of treatment.
Steve was randomized for the CAR-T arm of the trial.
At this point, he has had his cells harvested and sent off for re-engineering and is awaiting conditioning chemo then re-infusion of the CAR-T cells before the new year 2019.