"I’m glad my data will play a role in bringing hope to more cancer patients"

By Dan Murphy, study participant and Patient Working Group member

My name is Dan Murphy. I’m a husband and father of two daughters, living with Stage 4 pancreatic cancer. I want to tell my story to create awareness that hope is possible because of precision medicine.

In the spring of 2023, when I was just about to turn 53, I visited my family doctor with a mild stomach-ache. I was living an active lifestyle and otherwise feeling fine, so I wasn’t overly worried. Shortly thereafter, following bloodwork and an abdominal ultrasound my family doctor had ordered as a precaution, I found I had reason to really worry. I had a “spot” on my pancreas. Fast forward a few weeks, through tests, more bloodwork, an incorrect initial diagnosis and multiple CT scans, I was formally diagnosed with Stage 4 pancreatic cancer.  It turned out that the “spot” was a malignant tumour in the neck of my pancreas and the cancer had metastasized to my liver. For my wife Kathy, our daughters Grace and Maeve and I, it was devastating news. Our vision of our future fundamentally changed and we were void of hope.

When asked about living with cancer, I often say that for me, it’s like a dark cloud but we’ve been fortunate to find silver linings, hope. 

That dark cloud is because survival rates for pancreatic cancer patients are terribly low. 70 percent of patients don’t live past the first year after diagnosis and the 5-year relative survival rate is only 10%. Early detection is a challenge because in most cases, like mine, the symptoms are relatively mild, and diagnosis happens too late. Despite this, I am one of the lucky patients. This is largely because of our initial advocacy for genetic screening, my incredible physician support team and the treatments that I’ve received because of precision medicine. It’s been almost 18 months and, despite my prognosis, I’m living life as fully as I can. Precision medicine has been a silver lining that is helping me to defy the odds and offering my family and I, and many others, hope.

Early on, we learned the importance of advocacy. My mother passed away from breast cancer at 80 after being diagnosed in her early 70s. Pancreatic cancer at my age is not common so we asked my family doctor about potential genetic connections. She looked into it and I’ll be forever grateful that she expedited genetic testing. Because of this, we learned that I have the BRCA2 mutation and that knowledge unlocked opportunities for precision medicine instead of the standard treatment protocol. My oncologist, Dr. Erica Tsang, an expert in this area for pancreatic cancer, shared that patients with BRCA2 respond well to platinum-based chemotherapy. Having this knowledge allowed us to alter my plan and literally changed my life. I started a routine consisting of bi-weekly infusions of Folfirinox and over six months, my tumour shrunk and the lesions on my liver didn’t grow. It’s because of precision medicine that I got the right treatment at the right time for me and these results happened.

I was fortunate again, that soon after reviewing my genetic results, my oncology team recommended that I undergo further genomic testing. Advances in genomics have enabled quicker and easier access to identifying a patient’s unique genetic and biological characteristics.  In my case, the results showed further mutations with proven therapies enabling my Oncologist to identify additional treatment options. In January of this year, I started a maintenance medication called Olaparib, a PARP inhibitor drug that targets a cancer cell’s ability to repair its damaged DNA with the intention of preventing tumour growth. After eight months, my cancer has remained stable.

My family and I, like so many others, learned the hard way what a horrible disease pancreatic cancer is.  And while my prognosis remains, I have been able to find my silver linings because of genetic and genomic testing that led to personalized precision medicine treatments. I have been able to experience remarkable quality of life while living with cancer that so many other patients unfortunately don’t, because of my early advocacy to get genetic testing, the support of my physicians, my response to precision medicine treatments and the amazing advancements happening in precision medicine research. 

We are in the early days of precision medicine. I’m very grateful to be benefiting from the cutting-edge research that’s being led by Dr. Erica Tsang at Princess Margaret Cancer Centre, which is partially funded by the Marathon of Hope Cancer Centres Network. Importantly, I’m also very proud to be contributing my genomic and treatment data to the MOHCCN’s Gold Cohort, which will provide researchers with a wealth of data that will help them better understand how and why each patient responds to their treatment the way they do. We need to get to the point where precision medicine is the standard treatment protocol, and I’m glad my data will play a role in bringing hope to more cancer patients.

By sharing my story and my data, I want to raise awareness and bring hope to cancer patients. We can improve the conditions for people living with cancer. We can accelerate the implementation of this life changing treatment. I’m living proof of the improvement and hope that precision medicine brings to the lives of cancer patients.