HOUSTON – Kami Steele was diagnosed with melanoma, the most serious type of skin cancer. It moved through her body, to her kidney, lung, her brain. Traditional treatments were not going to work so she entered a clinical trial at MD Anderson in Houston and she's positive she is going to beat melanoma.
Kami Steele isn't afraid of a little chemo because she's been through so much already.
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"When this all started I was very very scared my first husband passed away from colon cancer when he was very young. He was 27. I was 26. So I always felt like I had already paid my dues with cancer I was done with the cancer card," Steele said.
But her battle with cancer was just beginning. It started with a lesion on her back several years ago. Doctors said it had a 1 percent chance of developing into cancer.
"It's gone from zero to 100 over a course of almost two years. I was scared to death of chemo, thinking chemo was my only option. And then when I arrived here the first thing they told me is chemo is not effective for melanoma and I'm like, 'Wait if not chemo, then what?'" Steele said.
Dr. Patrick Hwu at MD Anderson has been working on the answer to that question it's called immunotherapy.
"Our immune systems really were designed to fight infections, but what we're trying to do is now learn to redirect that against cancer." Hwu said. "Use them to kill cancer cells so we have an immune cell that can recognize a cancer cell, those immune cells circulate in our body can actually, what I call, give the kiss of death. They can touch the cancer cell and release proteins and poke holes in the cells and explode the cell."
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Steele was an ideal candidate because while her cancer had spread she was feeling good, which Hwu said meant her immune system was healthy and ready to fight.
"It was ideal time to try to stimulate that immune system try to kill the cancer cell," Hwu said.
Steele is just starting the process, where specially trained nurses administer chemo to bottom out her immune system.
"I will be the boy in the bubble I will have the mask and the gloves and everything," Steele said.
Next they'll inject her own modified cancer cells.
"What they have done is taken lesions from my lungs and also my chest, and it's melanoma. It's my melanoma cells. They take them to the lab they grow them into the super fighter T cells, these amazing killer cells," Steele said.
Steele is the one who's truly amazing. She walks the halls dozens of times a day to stay active and keep healthy and she keeps a positive attitude. Always in the back of her mind are her husband and two daughters.
"They are both very active," Steele said.
Photos of her family is all over her room. She leaves them behind, traveling nearly 250 miles for her treatment . This time she'll be here for three weeks.
"I am exactly where I need to be until that day Dr. Hwu says, 'You know what Kami? You are cancer free.' This is exactly where I want to be; exactly where I need to be," Steele said.
Hwu is just as invested in Steele. She is more than just a patient, she's a reminder that the breakthroughs that happen in the lab equal lives -- real people whose lives literally depend on it.
"I am going to be that statistic where, by faith and by healing and by the help of MD Anderson, I am that person at 40 years later will look back and say, 'I am a survivor I did this. We did this,'" Steele said.
Dr. Hwu says not every patient responds the same way, so the goal is to get a higher response rate and find the combination that is most effective. Steele is the second patient on this particular trial and she just left the hospital last week is back at home with her family and doing very well.