Dr. David Fajgenbaum

But in that lab study from 2013, it indicated that this one marker was up called PD-L1 in a few people's tumors from angiosarcoma patients.

And what was important about that is that there's a drug that's really good at inhibiting PD-1.

that already existed for other cancers.

It was approved for melanoma at the time and also approved for lung cancer.

And so we saw that result in this paper and thought, well, maybe his tumor also has increased PD-L1 and maybe that drug could work for it.

It had never been used before for his form of cancer.

But he was told by his doctor that they were out of options, that there was nothing else that could be done.

The chemo that they had tried wasn't working.

And so we decided

actually ended up getting that test done.

And it came back that it was very positive for the thing that we thought it would be from that paper.

And we were able to get Michael on this drug called pembrolizumab as the first patient ever with angiosarcoma.

And as I mentioned, a year ago, he walked his son down the aisle on his wedding day eight years later.

And just last weekend here in Nashville, last weekend, he walked his daughter down the aisle on her wedding day.

Damn.

And this is, I mean, this drug was always there.

No one had ever tried it before.

What's important is that this drug is also now used for other patients with angiosarcoma.

Unfortunately, it only works in the number, it's about 18% of patients.

And so it's not, you know, when it worked for Mike, we're like, oh my gosh, we saw angiosarcoma, got so excited.