Vim & Vigor - Spring 2020 - UVA - 7

7

MAIN PHOTO BY GETTY IMAGES

F

Front-row seats, the big piece of pie, bragging
rights-being first has its perks. But sometimes it takes a leap of faith to be first in line.
Sixty-nine-year-old Steve Chiminello
knows how it feels to take the lead.
The Huddleston, Virginia, resident was
diagnosed with non-Hodgkin lymphoma in
2017. In just a year's time, the cancer morphed from mild and manageable to a more
aggressive form of the disease.
"I thought we were going to be able to take
care of it. I had a few treatments and went
into remission. But four or five months later,
it came back and had transformed into something different from my initial diagnosis,"
Chiminello says. "I had to make a decision
about what to do next."

KNOWLEDGE IS POWER

It was a decision that he knew he couldn't
make blindly. So Chiminello, his daughter Heather and his longtime companion,
Nancy, pored over the research to get a
better understanding of which treatment

options were worth pursuing. It was a
referral from his local doctor that led him
to seek recommendations from the UVA
Cancer Center oncology team, including
Indumathy Varadarajan, MD, and Craig
Portell, MD.
"Dr. Indu-that's what her patients call
her-did a wonderful job presenting the
options," Chiminello says. The treatment that
showed the most promise: CAR T-cell therapy,
a new form of immunotherapy never before
administered to patients at UVA outside of a
clinical trial setting. Chimeric antigen receptor (CAR) T-cell therapy uses specially altered
T-cells to better target cancer cells.
"CAR T-cell therapy was just approved
by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration
for commercial use in adult patients with
refractory and relapsed lymphoma. That is
cancer that has not responded to two prior
forms of chemotherapy," Dr. Varadarajan
says. "I felt Mr. Chiminello was a good candidate because of the nature of his disease and
because he was fit and healthy overall."

UVA
Cancer Center
Oncology Team

Indumathy
Varadarajan, MD

Craig Portell, MD

VIM & VIGOR SPRING 2020



Vim & Vigor - Spring 2020 - UVA

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of Vim & Vigor - Spring 2020 - UVA

Contents
Vim & Vigor - Spring 2020 - UVA - Cover1
Vim & Vigor - Spring 2020 - UVA - Cover2
Vim & Vigor - Spring 2020 - UVA - Contents
Vim & Vigor - Spring 2020 - UVA - 2
Vim & Vigor - Spring 2020 - UVA - 3
Vim & Vigor - Spring 2020 - UVA - 4
Vim & Vigor - Spring 2020 - UVA - 5
Vim & Vigor - Spring 2020 - UVA - 6
Vim & Vigor - Spring 2020 - UVA - 7
Vim & Vigor - Spring 2020 - UVA - 8
Vim & Vigor - Spring 2020 - UVA - 9
Vim & Vigor - Spring 2020 - UVA - 10
Vim & Vigor - Spring 2020 - UVA - 11
Vim & Vigor - Spring 2020 - UVA - 12
Vim & Vigor - Spring 2020 - UVA - 13
Vim & Vigor - Spring 2020 - UVA - 14
Vim & Vigor - Spring 2020 - UVA - 15
Vim & Vigor - Spring 2020 - UVA - 16
Vim & Vigor - Spring 2020 - UVA - 17
Vim & Vigor - Spring 2020 - UVA - 18
Vim & Vigor - Spring 2020 - UVA - 19
Vim & Vigor - Spring 2020 - UVA - 20
Vim & Vigor - Spring 2020 - UVA - 21
Vim & Vigor - Spring 2020 - UVA - 22
Vim & Vigor - Spring 2020 - UVA - 23
Vim & Vigor - Spring 2020 - UVA - 24
Vim & Vigor - Spring 2020 - UVA - 25
Vim & Vigor - Spring 2020 - UVA - 26
Vim & Vigor - Spring 2020 - UVA - 27
Vim & Vigor - Spring 2020 - UVA - 28
Vim & Vigor - Spring 2020 - UVA - 29
Vim & Vigor - Spring 2020 - UVA - 30
Vim & Vigor - Spring 2020 - UVA - 31
Vim & Vigor - Spring 2020 - UVA - 32
Vim & Vigor - Spring 2020 - UVA - 33
Vim & Vigor - Spring 2020 - UVA - 34
Vim & Vigor - Spring 2020 - UVA - 35
Vim & Vigor - Spring 2020 - UVA - 36
Vim & Vigor - Spring 2020 - UVA - 37
Vim & Vigor - Spring 2020 - UVA - 38
Vim & Vigor - Spring 2020 - UVA - 39
Vim & Vigor - Spring 2020 - UVA - 40
Vim & Vigor - Spring 2020 - UVA - 41
Vim & Vigor - Spring 2020 - UVA - 42
Vim & Vigor - Spring 2020 - UVA - 43
Vim & Vigor - Spring 2020 - UVA - 44
Vim & Vigor - Spring 2020 - UVA - 45
Vim & Vigor - Spring 2020 - UVA - 46
Vim & Vigor - Spring 2020 - UVA - 47
Vim & Vigor - Spring 2020 - UVA - 48
Vim & Vigor - Spring 2020 - UVA - 49
Vim & Vigor - Spring 2020 - UVA - 50
Vim & Vigor - Spring 2020 - UVA - 51
Vim & Vigor - Spring 2020 - UVA - 52
Vim & Vigor - Spring 2020 - UVA - 53
Vim & Vigor - Spring 2020 - UVA - 54
Vim & Vigor - Spring 2020 - UVA - 55
Vim & Vigor - Spring 2020 - UVA - 56
Vim & Vigor - Spring 2020 - UVA - Cover3
Vim & Vigor - Spring 2020 - UVA - Cover4
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