{"id":776686,"date":"2026-09-20T10:24:09","date_gmt":"2026-09-20T10:24:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/776686\/"},"modified":"2026-09-20T10:24:09","modified_gmt":"2026-09-20T10:24:09","slug":"woman-with-four-cancers-in-40-years-says-trial-drug-shrank-tumour","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/776686\/","title":{"rendered":"Woman with four cancers in 40 years says trial drug shrank tumour"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">The cough began in 2020 and would not go away. Susan Gasson thought it was just a tickle in her throat and did not suspect her lungs.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">An X-ray found a mass, and she was later told she had lung cancer, her fourth cancer diagnosis in four decades.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">The 75-year-old from Greenwich in south-east London, had already been treated for breast, cervical and thyroid cancer. When the lung cancer returned after surgery, chemotherapy and radiotherapy, she joined a clinical trial and now takes a single tablet a day.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">&#8220;I feel lucky to still be here,&#8221; she said. &#8220;I get to watch my grandchildren grow up.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Most of her treatment has been at the Royal Marsden NHS Foundation Trust. The hospital said that before the trial there was no targeted therapy for lung cancer patients with a HER2 gene mutation, as Susan has, so they relied on repeated rounds of chemotherapy, which can have significant side effects. The mutation can drive cells to grow and divide excessively.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Since starting the trial, her tumour has shrunk and she has not needed any more chemotherapy, with her having a CT scan every six weeks.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">&#8220;My cancer has shrunk and the side effects have been minimal, allowing me to have a much better quality of life,&#8221; she said.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Cancer ran in her family, affecting both her parents and grandparents. In the early 1980s, when she was in her early 30s and living in Hertfordshire,  Susan found a pea-sized lump in her right breast.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The cough began in 2020 and would not go away. Susan Gasson thought it was just a tickle&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":776687,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[59,102,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-776686","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-health","tag-gb","tag-health","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/776686","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=776686"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/776686\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/776687"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=776686"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=776686"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=776686"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}