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By Dagny Stuart | Photography by Tamara Reynolds
Sometimes an accident can be a good thing. Sometimes an accident saves lives.
Just ask Teresa Lundberg, a Mt. Juliet, Tenn., cancer survivor who believes her life was saved because her breast cancer was treated with a drug called Herceptin.
“My mom dying of lung cancer was my last experience with cancer,” explained Lundberg. “Through the grace of God I was urged to get a second opinion. Dr. Mark Kelley and Vanderbilt-Ingram Cancer Center were highly recommended through various sources. Then I was blessed to be assigned to Dr. David Johnson and Dr. Julie Means, my oncologists. They said my tumor was HER2 positive, which meant there was something that was telling it to grow at a faster rate. I wanted to do whatever I could to stop it, and they gave me hope that that could be accomplished.”
Stopping the tumor’s growth was possible because of a series of happy accidents in the laboratory years earlier that revealed why tumors grow, and led to the development of drugs to halt that growth. Nobel Laureate Stanley Cohen, Ph.D., Vanderbilt distinguished professor of Biochemistry Emeritus, started the chain of discovery – and translation of that discovery – that led to the development of Herceptin.
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