Todd's Treatment Begins

October 18, 2024

It’s official. Todd started the DCVAX combo trial at UCLA today. 

We left New Jersey last Thursday and drove for four days so we could reach Los Angeles by Sunday night. We did this not even knowing if Todd would end up being eligible to be enrolled in the study. We drove 3,000 miles, knowing we could be out here for either 3 months or a couple of weeks. We left our kids, our families, our friends, and our new puppy for one simple reason: there is no other option.

You see, when you have a Glioblastoma recurrence, rGBM, you don’t have many options. There’s no Standard of Care for a recurrence. That’s just a fancy way of saying there isn’t that one thing that they give everyone. There’s no magical drug that buys you quality time. In short, there’s no magic wand. At the moment, battling this most lethal of all brain tumors is a very, very steep uphill battle. You know the shingles commercial that repeatedly tells people, “Shingles Doesn’t Care?” Well, shingles apparently cares a lot more than a GBM. It is an insidious, aggressive tumor that is extremely difficult to stop and it doesn’t give patients and their families too much time to figure it out.

Todd Willever celebrating trial enrollment with UCLA's Dr. Robert Chong.

But here we are, in sunny Los Angeles, so grateful that the call came in yesterday and Todd is eligible for this DCVAX trial. I’m not a doctor, I’m a GBM wife, so I can’t give you the scientific jargon and expertise and you, most likely, don’t want that. But what I can give you is the simple explanation.

Todd may or may not have gotten an immunotherapy drug today. They are testing the impact of it before surgery. On October 29, 2024, he will have his second brain surgery. The first was when he was diagnosed in May 2022. One of the most brilliant doctors on the planet, Dr. Linda Liau, will remove the tumor recurrence and use a special process to preserve the tumor. In about 2-3 weeks, they will conduct a procedure called Leukapheresis. This will remove his white blood cells so they can be introduced to the tumor cells. In a lab, somewhere on this campus, a team will train Todd’s white blood cells to detect and attack these horrific GBM cells. Then, these little dynamos, the dendritic cells, will teach the immune system to do this at all times. 

Sounds next level, right? That’s because this is. Training our own amazing, incredible immune systems to destroy brain cancer cells is a paradigm shifting, earth shattering, monumental change. We will update this blog as we progress, adding some back story, some developments, and of course, Todd’s progress. If you care to send Todd and our family some positive energy, we will gladly accept it.

This fight definitely takes a village.

• Lisa