Since childhood, Cindy Scully has found a safe haven in running. For her, running wasn’t just about putting her body through a tough workout; it was about finding peace.
“Running has always been something I can’t give up,” says 55-year-old Scully, of Marshfield, Massachusetts. “It’s part of my identity.”
So, when Scully was training for the 2025 Newburyport Marathon with her daughter and a steep hill she’d run countless times suddenly felt difficult, she knew something was wrong.
After a virtual consult with a nurse practitioner, she went in to her primary care physician’s office for bloodwork. She later had an endoscopy and colonoscopy on the same day.
Scully was diagnosed with follicular lymphoma, a slow-growing cancer of the lymphatic system that affects white blood cells. There is no risk factor or familial tendency for lymphoma—it is a random event.
She was then referred to David Qualls, MD, a medical oncologist of the Lymphoma Program at Dana-Farber Cancer Institute.
Running through the Cancer
Qualls discussed several treatment options with Scully, including radiation, chemotherapy, and a clinical trial. Qualls says it is not uncommon for patients to choose a clinical trial as their first line of treatment. It is a palatable option that gives patients access to the newest treatment regimens with close monitoring.
That fall, Scully chose the clinical trial.
“The biggest thing was that the clinical trial involved no chemotherapy. It was a little scary because it was new and I would be one of the first people to try it,” Scully says. “But skipping chemotherapy was very attractive to me.”
The clinical trial, led by Reid Merryman, MD, director of clinical research in the Division of Lymphoma and clinical director of the Follicular and Marginal Zone Lymphoma Centers, was a phase 2 study of epcoritamab and rituximab for first-line treatment of follicular lymphoma. Epcoritamab is a type of immunotherapy that targets CD3 on immune cells and CD20, a protein found on the surface of tumor cells. Rituximab is a standard targeted immunotherapy to help reduce immune side effects caused by epcoritamab.
“Chemoimmunotherapy is the most common standard of care for patients with newly diagnosed high-tumor burden follicular lymphoma, but epcoritamab and other novel immunotherapies called bispecific antibodies are challenging the role of chemoimmunotherapy and could delay or even obviate the need for chemotherapy in this disease in the future,” says Merryman.
In the trial’s initial group of 35 patients, more than 95% responded to the treatment, including another patient at Dana-Farber. The trial was later expanded to include an additional 65 patients. Scully was one of them.
“Clinical trials are like a bridge between scientific discoveries and actual clinical practice,” Qualls says. “People like Cindy who participate in these trials help us cross that bridge, and help bring new and better treatments to everyone with these conditions in the future.”
The treatment could soon be a potential option for patients with follicular lymphoma pending FDA approval.
Facing a new marathon
This year, Scully completed both her treatment and the Boston Marathon.
“I ran the marathon on April 20, and a week later I went back to receive my final rounds of treatment,” Scully says. “Being able to get the green light from Dr. Qualls to run this marathon was part of my recovery. It kept my spirits up.”
In 2025, Scully trained and ran the Boston Marathon but was disappointed in her results. At the time, she didn’t know she was sick; her assumption was that she overtrained.
This year, she completed the iconic race in 3 hours and 29 minutes, making this her fastest marathon time ever. Remarkably, Scully completed the race alongside three other cancer survivor teammates.
“This year was awesome because I did exactly what I should have been able to do a year ago,” Scully says. “This was my redemption marathon.”