Breast Cancer Research Volunteer Saved by Results of Her Study

By Renee Twombly

She was told to take a trip, to do whatever made her happy. That is, after Ginger Empey , 50 years old, got her affairs in order.

Her cancer, detected in February 1995, had resulted in complete removal of a breast, but the cancer had already spread to her liver. Nothing stopped it. The cancer was so resistant to chemotherapy that her doctors at the University of California at Los Angeles told her nothing could prevent the golf-ball-sized tumors in her liver from growing. In early summer, they told her that the cancer would probably kill her by Christmas.

Empey , a public health nurse with self-admitted spunk, shot back: "I cannot believe that at this fabulous institution, there is not something else, there is some other treatment, there is not some clinical trial — something here for me."

She was told that a novel therapy was soon to be tested but that she was likely too close to death to qualify for the trial.

Empey couldn't know it at the time, but the drug, Herceptin later proved to be the first successful therapy to attack cancer at its genetic roots.

The drug represented the nexus of medicine and genetic science. And if it worked, it would be the first alternative to the toxic chemotherapy that kills any cell that divides, even normal hair and blood cells. Herceptin targets only the errant cancer cells, so there are minimum side effects. But no one knew that yet, and Empey had no idea her cancer cells were thriving on rogue genes — just the situation the drug was designed for. She only understood that she needed help.

So she knocked on doors and made calls. The trial wasn't even approved yet by UCLA's institutional review board, but she started calling the UCLA physician leading the study, Dennis Slamon, MD, as well as everyone she had met at UCLA, and many people she didn't know. She phoned twice a week for three months. "I drove them crazy," she says matter-of-factly.

She was finally admitted into the Phase III trial — the first of 469 women enrolled. All were patients expected to die from their cancer within months.

Empey had her first treatment on August 31, 1995 . At the time she described herself as "the sickest person I have ever known," yet she made the 220-mile round trip every week from her Bakersfield home to receive injections at UCLA. By Christmas, the date her doctor had predicted she would be buried, she suddenly "felt like I had gotten my life back again."

Her tumors shrank by 25% in the first three months, and after three years of injections, the tumors were obliterated. All that can now be seen on her regular scans are tiny specks, which may be scar tissue.

Herceptin proved that a medicine can identify faulty genes in a cancer cell and fix them, Empey says. While she maintains that the drug is "miraculous," it is not a magic bullet for everyone. It helped only half of the women who participated in the initial trial — but then they were all deadly ill.

"It helps to be informed, and it pays to become involved in research," Empey says. "I knew it wasn't my time to die. It's important for others to know that cancer isn't automatically a death knell, and there may be new therapies being tested that can help."

Now Empey says she is "as close to remission as I will probably ever get." But every week, she inserts doses of Herceptin into the catheter "port" that is permanently implanted into her chest. "I don't know when to stop. If those specks are cancer, they will grow back without Herceptin to stop them."

She has taken the genetically based drug for almost 300 weeks, longer than any other person. "If I am cured," she says, "then I am the first cure. And I am very grateful."