Well, where to start? On April 08, 2024, i was diagnosed with Stage IV Colon Cancer, also known as Metastatic Colon Cancer (mCRC). On the left there, you can see my primary mass, which i have named “Sebastian”, just so it is easier to talk about him in public. It also seems to put people at ease when my disease can be talked about without using the term “cancer”. Naming him “Sebastian”, i felt, gave a certain distance and separation.

i have been in the realm of therapeutic discovery for oncology or inflammatory disease for over 25 years. i have met cancer patients and heard their stories. i have family members, close family members who have suffered the indignity of cancer and associated therapies just to succumb to the disease. i have met cancer since i was a small boy of

of 4 years of age. It was not new to me, nor is some of its biology. Still, on April 08, 2024, the shock that hit me was unmistakable. The world paused, ice ran down my spine, felt as if someone walked over my grave, life flashed before my eyes… pick a trite literary description, it would have been fitting for a description for what occurred within me.

The first emotion that raced through me was regret, the regret that my time to spend with my wife is now even more finite. The second emotion was the sudden fear and sorrow that i might predecease our eldest cat Millie, who i am fortunate enough to be her chosen human to sit and sleep with.

Mentally, what went through was the recall of 5-year survival rates, case numbers, current front line treatments and associated side effects. What also went through my mind were the various therapeutic targets i have drugged over the years in the course of developing colon cancer focused therapeutics. What also went through my mind were the in vitro and in vivo outcomes that i have recorded using PTM-001-ADC and how ironic (is it “Ironic” or is it just a series of unfortunate events? Not hard to rhyme “Metastatic Colon Cancer” in a song though) it is that this new mCRC patient is still in the throes of fundraising for a promising ADC targeting mCRC and colon cancer.

“Sebastian” presented as a 6 cm mass sticking out from my colon mucosa when the endoscope beheld him. The metastasis he threw off decided to make a home in my liver, and, being unbiased fellows, they spread across each lobe of my liver. Surgical intervention was ruled out my my excellent oncology team, and my oncologist, a woman who possesses one of the rare qualities in modern medicine (the ability to listen and empathize while being firm yet non-confrontational in communicating her wishes and treatment plans), started me off on FOLFIRINOX (5-FU, Irinotecan, Leucovorin, and Oxaliplatin) with anti-VEGF for good measure. The initial infusion schedule was an infusion every 2 weeks.

Due to numbness in my fingers, and because “Sebastian” and his liver mets seems to be responding, Oxaliplatin was taken off and we slowly lengthened the duration between infusions. i am now at an infusion every 4 weeks. That said, i feel that the rest period between infusions is about to be reduced soon.

How am i coping? Well, i am lucky really. i finally got the chance to shave my head and preserve marital bliss… though to be honest, i rather jumped the gun a bit. My side effects are generally mild, especially when it comes to GI side effects, though after the dozen or so infusions, there is an accumulating effect and the GI side effects gets a wee bit more prominent with every few infusions. Oh, and for the past three infusions cycles, i’ve developed a recurring hemorrhoid that would arise during the infusion week and fade away until the next cycle. All these side effects that i am experiencing truly pales when compared to other cancer patients i have known and still know. i am truly very lucky indeed.

The full realization of where i am really hit me a month or so ago. i was sitting at the infusion center, marveling at how short the anti-VEGF infusion is (30 minutes) compared to the chemo infusions (especially 5-FU, which is a 46 hour take home infusion) while eagerly crunching the numbers from the latest measurements from PTM’s most recent PTM-001-ADC xenograft study. The study was designed to compare PTM-001-ADC version 2 with Irinotecan and 5-FU (independent or combined). As the chemo is slowly being pumped into me via my medi-port, measurements of T84 xenograft tumors in mice were being read and entered into my GraphPad table for graphing.

In this data set, all the animals in the Irinotecan + 5-FU group have died, all but one 5-FU treated animal still lives, PTM-001-ADC is nicely shrinking the xenograft tumor with greater efficacy than Irinotecan alone.

And my 5-year survival is around 14%.

This feeling of excitement because of experimental outcome while realizing the finite nature of the diagnosis rather gave me some feeling of warmth. i am by far not the only scientist in drug development who has been diagnosed with the same disease that they are trying to discover therapeutics against. Long have i wondered how those i have known, that i still know, have felt and now i feel a certain kinship and belonging.

The data also gives me hope, hope for successful funding so that we can do the work to support an IND and move PTM-001-ADC into the clinic and into patients, and hope that one day our funding audience will no longer fear glycan targets and low affinity antibodies and see benefits in both the target and antibody behavior.

So, we go on. Push forward as we can and savor every incremental move forward no matter how small.