A PATIENT with a fast-growing lymphatic cancer who struggled to respond to previous treatments has been given a lifeline from an experimental drug trial.

Husband, father and grandfather Michael Prestidge, from Wilmslow, was diagnosed with non-Hodgkin lymphoma in May 2015 after suffering from back and stomach pain at night.

The 59-year-old had seen limited results from treatment for his stage four Diffuse Large B cell Lymphoma, but is now seeing a dramatic response to a new drug called ADCT-402, which he is receiving as part of a clinical trial at the Christie, in Manchester.

He said: “I kept waking up in agony in the middle of the night. I took myself to Accident and Emergency where they first thought it could be a problem with my kidney or gallstones.

“After going back a few times with no improvement I had further investigations which revealed, to my shock, that I had an aggressive non-Hodgkin lymphoma. This was devastating news for me and my family.”

Non-Hodgkin lymphoma is a type of blood cancer that occurs when white blood cells that help protect the body from infection and disease, begin behaving abnormally and turn into cancerous cells.

When this disease is at stage four, this means the lymphoma has spread beyond the lymph nodes to other organs of the body such as the bone marrow or liver.

Following his diagnosis, Michael’s first line of treatment was a course of chemotherapy at hospital.

After becoming pain free he’d hoped the treatment had been effective, but within 12 months his symptoms started coming back and tests showed that the lymphoma had returned.

He was referred to the Lymphoma Unit at The Christie in May 2016, where he has since had four clinical trials as part of his treatment, following two earlier lines of treatment.

“I had a huge tumour in my armpit when I started this trial however after just a couple of weeks, I could feel and see it was shrinking,” Michael added.

“It’s reassuring that I’m having a positive response to this trial and I hope this continues, however I understand how unpredictable this disease can be. I’m hopeful for the future but am taking it one day at a time.”

Prof John Radford, Michael’s consultant, believes the early progress made is ‘promising’.

He added: “It is only on this latest trial of ADCT-402 however that Michael’s tumour has shown such a dramatic response.

“His first scan performed just five weeks after starting the trial shows only very small amounts of remaining disease – a stark contrast to his pre study scan.

“It is very early days and we need to monitor Michael closely to assess how durable this response will be.

“We have a lot of further research to do on ADCT-402 before we can establish how these findings could help more patients like Michael in the future.”