Title:Thrivers event celebrates impact

Last fall, Georgetown’s Lombardi Comprehensive Cancer Center held a celebratory event for cancer ‘thrivers,’ a term for patients who have completed their treatment and have returned to thriving, full lives.

The event, hosted by Bernard and Mary Chris Jammet, included keynote speakers Michael Atkins, deputy director of Georgetown Lombardi and a pioneer in cancer immunotherapy, and Geoffrey Gibney, co-leader of Georgetown Lombardi’s Melanoma Disease Group and director of Solid Tumor Cellular Therapy.

The event showcased the impact of successful treatments and also gave patients a chance to bond over their experiences. In contrast to the “relatively lonely journey” of treatment, “now you’re in a room with people who’ve been through essentially the same journey,” Atkins said.

Presenters highlighted research on the progress of immunotherapy including the personalized cancer vaccine from Moderna and the newly FDA-approved T-cell therapy, Lifileucel. Similar treatment approaches are also being investigated for patients with advanced kidney cancer. “This is a field that is dramatically changing what we offer patients,” Gibney says.

But there is still work to be done.

“Our goal when we’re treating patients with cancer should not be to turn cancer into a chronic disease,” Atkins says. “We should be striving to make cancer a curable disease.”