Tracy Tomlinson was diagnosed with ovarian cancer which had spread shortly before Christmas 2020.
A woman with advanced ovarian cancer has become the first patient in the world to receive a pioneering new therapy.
Tracy Tomlinson, 58, was given the drug at the Christie NHS Foundation Trust in Manchester as part of a clinical trial evaluating a new type of treatment for several types of cancer.
The therapy, known as ZI-MA4-1, will be tested on people with ovarian cancer, lung cancer, sarcomas and head and neck cancer in a trial led by the Christie, with a site also at the Royal Marsden in London.
Many people in the study have few other options for survival.
Mrs Tomlinson, from Chadderton in Greater Manchester, has already beaten the odds in staying alive, having undergone surgery and several rounds of chemotherapy since she was diagnosed in 2020.
The new therapy works by combining two powerful methods in fighting cancer.
Firstly, it harnesses the body’s natural killer (NK) cells, which are specialist immune cells that destroy abnormal ones.
Secondly, T-cell receptors (TCRs) on the cells are engineered to recognise and target tumours producing a protein called Mage-A4.
Mage-A4 is found in several types of cancer and experts believe it is an ideal target for attacking abnormal cells.
Unlike some personalised treatments, ZI-MA4-1 is designed as an “off-the-shelf” therapy that uses immune cells from donors.
The treatment is manufactured in advance from donor cells rather than being individually tailored to each patient, with hundreds of doses produced from a single manufacturing batch.
Experts believe this could mean advanced cell therapies are available to more patients more quickly, and at a cheaper cost.
Mrs Tomlinson was diagnosed with ovarian cancer that had spread shortly before Christmas 2020 and immediately underwent treatment.
By summer 2021, scans showed no evidence of disease but, a year later, the cancer returned.
Despite further rounds of treatment and 48 chemotherapy infusions, her cancer kept coming back.
The former Civil Service manager told the Press Association she was diagnosed as stage 3C, which means there were cancer growths spreading into the peritoneum of the body.
She currently has a tumour between the liver and kidney as well as small tumours elsewhere.
She said: “They’ve got rid of the cancer twice but then it came back about two and a half years ago, and we’ve never seemed to get rid of it since then.
“The chemotherapy has shrunk it but when treatment stops, it has come back.
“It is a lot to live with and there’s been ups and downs – there’s been elation, there’s been disappointment, and bits in between.
“But I try very, very hard to remain very positive. Every day that I wake up is a positive. You’ve got to have hope.”
Mrs Tomlinson said in her working life, she was target driven and set herself very high standards.
“But you can’t control cancer,” she said. “What I can control is how I look at it, how I deal with it, and trying to eat healthily and taking the positives in everything.
“And I’ve learned to appreciate the smallest of things that we take for granted – and the people around you and what they mean to you.
“Also, the beauty of outside and the trees and the colour of the trees and the birds singing.
“We just go from A to B, don’t we? Busy, busy, busy. But we never slow down and take in the wonder of what’s around us.
“I often think, ‘I’m still here’, and that’s helped me think, ‘Why can’t I still be here in 10 years?’, ‘Why can’t I still be here in 15 years?’
“And I believe taking all the treatments offered to me is helping me kick that can a bit further down the road.
“I don’t want to go anywhere. I’ve still got a lot of things I want to do and things I want to achieve.”
Mrs Tomlinson said husband Paul, who she married in 2022, is her “rock” and she is also close to her son Harry, 28.
Last year, she was referred to the Christie’s early phase clinical trials team for extensive screening, and learned she was a suitable candidate for the Zima-101 clinical trial.
“I decided almost straight away that I was going to go for it,” she said.
“Then afterwards you think, ‘Am I doing the right thing?’, because it is a little bit scary being the first person in the world to have the treatment.”
She has had three infusions of the therapy, with the option of another one depending on what scans show.
“If it benefits me, absolutely fantastic,” she said. “But if it benefits other people in the future, that’s important too.
“I don’t want to have gone through everything I’ve gone through for nothing. I want to feel like I have made a difference.”
Professor Fiona Thistlethwaite, consultant medical oncologist at the Christie, said: “While this is an early-stage study primarily focused on safety, it represents an exciting step forward in efforts to develop new treatment options for people like Tracy with advanced solid tumours.
“We hope the knowledge gained will help shape future cancer treatments and ultimately improve outcomes for patients.”
Dr Jon Lim, consultant medical oncologist in advanced immunotherapy and cell therapy at the Christie, told PA: “What’s very exciting about this is that these are essentially not kind of antibody-based, but living cells.
“These are live immune cells that are infused in hundreds of millions back to the patient, and the idea of this is that it is a little bit more targeted.
“The reason this is very interesting is because this is the first of its kind globally in this approach, where it’s taking donor immune cells, manipulating or engineering them, and putting them into the recipient.
“Tracy is essentially getting somebody else’s immune cells that have been engineered to ‘see’ her cancer.
“We’re very excited. This is a novel approach in the cell therapy space. We are also really showcasing what we can do in the UK.”
Namir Hassan, chief executive of Norwegian firm Zelluna, which makes ZI-MA4-1, said Mrs Tomlinson’s first dose is a “landmark moment”, adding: “It represents the moment when years of research moved beyond the laboratory and into the clinic, offering a new potential treatment option for patients facing advanced cancers with limited alternatives.”
Only around 15% of women survive ovarian cancer for five years or more after they are diagnosed.
Dr Diana Hernandez, director of immune and advanced therapies at Anthony Nolan, said: “NK cells have huge potential as off-the-shelf therapies, and this trial takes us one step closer to a wider application of engineered NK cells in the targeted treatment of cancers.
“At Anthony Nolan we have long seen the potential of cellular therapies like this to transform the lives of patients with blood cancer.
“Today’s research represents exciting progress for patients with solid tumours to benefit from these promising therapies.”
