ASTRID CHOSE BREYANZI® OVER A STEM CELL TRANSPLANT
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ASTRID FOUND A DIFFERENT KIND OF TREATMENT
Astrid was part of the Breyanzi clinical trial, which led to the FDA approval of Breyanzi.
For this physician’s assistant, it started with an itch
The medical field is a world Astrid knows well. Born and raised in Mexico, she moved to the United States for school and met her husband, Daniel, before taking the next step in her career. As someone who always loved medicine but wanted a work-life balance, it felt only right that her job choice would be a physician’s assistant. She envisioned herself working in ICU critical care and was close to achieving her dream as graduation neared.
But in the summer of 2019 right before graduation, Astrid started having itching all over her body. When she went to her primary care doctor, she said to Astrid, “It’s all stress and I think you’re fine.” Instead, more symptoms began to appear.
On the day before Astrid went to the hospital, she told her sister, Aurora, that she felt a huge pressure on her chest. The pain spread down her arm and increased to the point where she couldn’t even lie flat on her back.
Astrid found herself headed to the emergency room. There, she underwent a multitude of tests and labs, which ultimately led to an unexpected result.
“You don’t have a clot in your lung, but you have a mass in your chest,” the doctor said.
She had been diagnosed with non-Hodgkin large B-cell lymphoma. Instead of taking the next steps in her career in the ICU, Astrid was now figuring out how she would tell her family and what her journey would look like.
Navigating the challenges of chemotherapy
Only a week after Astrid received her diagnosis, she had to put school on pause and start her treatment back home in Texas. Astrid was admitted to the hospital for an entire week, and for five days, she had consistent chemotherapy.
While receiving her six cycles of chemotherapy, Astrid experienced side effects such as severe nausea, uncomfortable bloating, and the swelling and blistering of her tongue, which made it hard to drink.
A chance for a different treatment
But by the sixth cycle, the scan was still lighting up with either tumors or inflammation. The doctor presented her with two options, either proceeding with radiation or holding off and scanning in another month to see if the inflammation would go down. Faced with a nerve-wracking decision, she, Daniel, and her doctor decided to wait.
Unfortunately, before she could reach the date of her next scan, the itching symptoms came back. Her doctor scanned her the next day and confirmed that her mass had grown. But what Astrid didn’t know was that there was another treatment option she had never heard of.
A reason to be hopeful
Astrid was now faced with a choice: receive a stem cell transplant or enroll in a clinical trial for CAR T-cell therapy, known today as Breyanzi, which uses your own immune cells to fight cancer. She was optimistic about CAR T-cell therapy and believed it was her best option. “So I wasn’t confident on the stem cell transplant,” Astrid recalled. “And so Daniel and I were both kind of thinking, ‘No, we want the CAR T. We want to try it.’”
Astrid liked the fact that CAR T used her own immune cells. For her, it felt like a more targeted approach.
Managing expectations
As a physician’s assistant, Astrid knew there might be some side effects after her one-time infusion. She initially experienced chest pain and felt fatigued. After 10 days of being monitored in the hospital, she was able to go home. Other potential side effects of Breyanzi that are life-threatening and can lead to death include cytokine release syndrome and neurologic toxicity, while other common side effects include fever, low white or red blood cells, severe diarrhea, or severe nausea.
Individual experiences with side effects may vary.
The results are in
Astrid and her husband Daniel were excited to see significant progress on her 30-day scan. Three months later, her doctor finally declared that she was in remission, which, as Daniel recalls, “was just the greatest sense of relief you could imagine.”
And the journey continues
After receiving Breyanzi, Astrid was able to continue fulfilling her dream of becoming a physician’s assistant. She passed her board exam and started to think about what was next for her career. She initially started working with leukemia patients in the oncology field, where she was able to use her personal journey to help her patients. Today, she works in pediatric surgery.
Astrid and Daniel now have a family that keeps them very busy, and Astrid is enjoying life as a working mom.
“I try to stay in the now. And I prioritize family and quality time and friends more than my career because at the end of the day, that’s what matters.”
—Astrid, a real Breyanzi patient
