A Fred Hutch clinical trial gave this cancer patient a chance and he’s been running with it for 22 years
Clinical trial participants are often the unsung heroes of medicine. Clinical research investigates new ways to prevent, detect and treat illness, and its courageous patient participants play a foundational role in that process.
Drew Bouton, from Olympia, Wash., is one of those patients. Drew lives with metastatic prostate cancer and receives treatment at the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Center in Seattle, Wash. Diagnosed at the age of 45, he was reluctantly told by his doctor that though survival is a bell curve, he likely had just two years to live.
That was 22 years ago. In the decades since, he has spent years participating in oncology clinical research through Fred Hutch and helping to define the standard for cancer care - giving back to the hospital, and the medical research field, that have given him so much.
Cases like that of Bouton’s are noteworthy, and often the exception to the rule, but the chance he was given just to be a part of this research is central to the care Fred Hutch offers many of its patients.
“The access to clinical trials is part of being cared for at Fred Hutchinson Cancer Center,” said Heather Cheng, M.D., Bouton’s medical oncologist at Fred Hutch. “Patients now have more options than ever to keep their metastatic prostate cancer well-controlled. We know that people can live well with cancer and that we can help it stay in the background and not occupy the foreground of their life.”
This symbiotic relationship has offered Bouton access to therapeutic strategies that were novel at the time, like chemotherapy prior to surgery. And for the last 10 years, he has been taking abiraterone acetate (Zytiga), medication that was considered experimental back when he first began taking it. Now, a decade later, abiraterone acetate is considered the standard of care for both metastatic prostate cancer and prostate cancer with aggressive features that remains confined to the prostate.
“The whole reason that this drug is a current standard of care is because people like Drew participated in clinical trials,” said Cheng.