When Donna McDaniel came to Dana-Farber with what she thought was lung cancer in 2024, she could barely walk and struggled to breathe. She’d been treated elsewhere, but the drugs had seemingly stopped working. Her quality of life was suffering, and she couldn’t keep up with her busy catering job at Blue Cross Blue Shield.
“It had gotten to the point where I couldn’t work anymore because I couldn’t breathe, and I couldn’t really walk 10 feet without feeling tired,” McDaniel recalls. “My husband and I decided that maybe we should give Dana-Farber a try, because we’d heard such good things about patient recovery and treatment.”
At her first meeting with Susana Campos, MD, MPH, clinical director of the Gynecologic Oncology Program at Dana-Farber Brigham Cancer Center, McDaniel began to relax. Campos first identified fluid/infection in her lungs, which was causing the respiratory distress. After a drainage procedure, McDaniel experienced marked relief.
“It felt like I’d gone from zero to 100: I could breathe again,” she remembers.
But a biopsy revealed something unusual about the tumor: It had actually originated from another part of her body altogether.
A mysterious diagnosis
McDaniel’s initial cancer in her lungs was a surprise. As an otherwise healthy 50-year-old, McDaniel assumed that she had the flu or a nagging cough, and she was ultimately prescribed antibiotics for pneumonia.
But, a few months later, her symptoms reemerged. A bronchoscopy identified a cancerous lung tumor. Although not definitive, her pathology report suggested that the tumor might have originated in her gynecological tract. McDaniel went on to receive therapy with carboplatin, taxane, and dostarlimab. Next, she began a clinical trial that targeted a mutation known as KRAS, but she found the treatment difficult to tolerate.
It was at this point that McDaniel sought consultation at Dana-Farber. Ten years prior, she had been diagnosed with cervical cancer and had undergone a hysterectomy. Despite a 10-year interval, could the cancer in her lungs actually be metastatic cervical cancer? Additional testing on her lung tissue revealed that the tumor was HPV-positive, indicating a cervical cancer link.
A breakthrough treatment
This knowledge opened up a new therapeutic option. Campos began treating McDaniel with tisotumab vedotin. Known as Tivdak, this is an antibody-drug conjugate (ADC), a highly targeted therapy to treat recurrent or metastatic cervical cancer that has progressed after chemotherapy.
McDaniel’s future is brighter because her medical history informed her diagnosis. Now on her tenth cycle of the drug, her stage IV disease is stable. She receives a 30-minute infusion every three weeks, where she’s accompanied by her husband or daughter.
“We had the resources to look at previous specimens — in this case specimens that were 10 years old — and do additional testing on them. This was really us going back and saying: ‘This doesn’t make any sense.’ Additional testing on the original tumor was imperative to understanding the metastatic focus,” Campos says. “It was a bit of a fishing expedition.”
But that expedition paid off.
“Always try to get a second opinion,” McDaniel says. “From the first time I met Dr. Campos, she put me at ease. She was very informative and educational. I learned a lot from her, she was very concerned about my well-being, and it’s been like that ever since. She gave me her number. I can call her anytime. I only wish I met her sooner.”
Today, McDaniel has her energy back. But, most importantly, she has peace of mind.
“For now, I’m focusing on exercising, eating healthy, and trying to be happy,” McDaniel says. “Always stay positive.”