Patient stories.
While none of us ever expected an oncogene-driven cancer diagnosis, our personal stories inform the medical, research and pharma community on the issues we face. They can also become someone else’s survival guide.
Please read and share our stories to help us advocate for more research. If you’ve been impacted by an oncogene lung cancer, get in touch to share your story. This could be the beacon of hope someone desperately needs.
There’s always hope.
Retired military skydiver Michael lived with large cell lung cancer just over two years.
After discovering a rare STK11 mutation, his wife embarked on a quest for answers, fuelling her advocacy to honour his memory and advocate for others.
Read other inspiring stories.
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Meet Kathrin.
Kathrin is a vibrant fitness instructor and mum from Munich whose crippling foot pain age 44 turned out to be the first sign of stage 4 ALK+ lung cancer. Thanks to biomarker testing, she began targeted therapy that reduced her tumours by 96% in just weeks. Now back to teaching, she’s living fully, embracing each day with energy, purpose, and gratitude.
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Meet Mel.
Mel, aged 57, lives with her partner Sarah in East London. She lives a full, joyful and purposeful life with stage 4 EGFR+ lung cancer. Mel takes a daily targeted therapy drug that was not available as standard care when she was first diagnosed in 2020. She has minimal side-effects and is delighted not to need further chemotherapy after a gruelling previous experience.
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Meet Emily.
Emily, a nature-lover, qualified lawyer and wife from North Carolina, USA, had always been healthy and led an active life. One day chest pressure quickly escalated to include incessant coughing fits. Read about how Emily’s misdiagnosis of double pneumonia turned out to be stage IV, RET-positive lung cancer at the age of 39. Also why she's counting on research.
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Meet Sally.
Sally, from Manchester, UK, started noticing she was losing sight in her right eye. It turns out she had stage 4 ALK+ lung cancer that had spread to her eye. She credits her remarkable 10-year survival to medical research. But Sally also feels that more research is needed to find better and less toxic ways to treat lung cancer and brain metastases, find cancer earlier and ultimately a cure.
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Meet Amy.
In August 2015 on “GCSE results day,” when 16-year-olds across the UK receive results to major nationwide exams, Amy was out celebrating – like many other students her age. She had a small fall, injuring her rib. That small injury caused Amy pain on and off for the next few years. Investigation into this pain eventually led to Amy’s stage IV, ALK-positive lung cancer diagnosis in 2020, aged 20.
