Almost 90 days after undergoing an innovative treatment against cancer, patient Paulo Peregrino is back on his walks in São Paulo. For 13 years, he fought the disease and achieved complete remission of the lymphoma in just 1 month through CAR-T Cell therapy. Paulo was about to start palliative care when he became the 14th patient to receive this revolutionary treatment between March and April.
This technique uses the patient’s own defense cells, modified in the laboratory, and is part of a study funded by FAPESP and CNPq. All patients who underwent the method achieved remission of at least 60% of the tumors. The treatment was carried out by the Unified Health System (SUS), and eight of the patients are still alive today.
This method targets three types of cancer: B-lymphoblastic leukemia, B-cell non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma, and multiple myeloma, which affects the bone marrow. Currently, the protocol for multiple myeloma is not yet available in the country.
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Paulo is excited about his progress: “Since discharge, I have practically not stopped walking. At first, it was short walks of about 10 minutes, but I’m already walking more. The physiotherapist was impressed and proud when she saw me walking. Maybe that’s why I’m called Peregrino”, he jokes.
He left the hospital at the end of May, but recently had a fever and returned to the Hospital das Clínicas for medical follow-up. However, last Friday, he left on foot, with a backpack on his back, walking 2,437 steps, 1,610 meters in 25 minutes to a market, returning home by car using an app-based transport service.
When he is not walking around the land where he rented an apartment in the capital of São Paulo, while he is still being monitored by doctors, Paulo is focused on his project of writing a book that recounts his journey of more than ten years fighting the disease.
“This weekend, I intend to finalize the chronology of the book. I’m collaborating with my wife to enter data and separate photos by dates. I already have 55 pages written”, she celebrates. Paulo, aged 61, is the most recent case of complete remission in a short period of time in the study group of the Cell Therapy Center, adopted by the University of São Paulo (USP), in partnership with the Butantan Institute and the Blood Center of Ribeirão Preto since 2019.
