Lymphoma Patient Advocate: Proposed Federal Cuts to Research Threaten Progress in Cancer Treatments

It was the discovery of a minor bump on his head in 1998 that led Robert “Bob” Mesloh to learn that he was about to face a major bump in what had been a lifetime of good health.

“I was on a business trip overseas when I noticed a very small pimple-size bump on my right temple,” recalled Bob, who at the time was an executive with AT&T, living in New Jersey with his family. When he returned home, Bob went to his primary care doctor, who referred him to a dermatologist, who subsequently sent him to a surgeon for the removal of what they all thought was a simple cyst.

“Two weeks after the surgery, the surgeon called me late at night to tell me the biopsy confirmed something called follicular non-Hodgkin lymphoma [NHL],” Bob said. “I knew nothing about lymphoma, not even that it was cancer. The news was shocking to me, my wife, and our high school-aged son.”

Bob’s treatment was arduous. It involved prophylactic radiation — requiring him to wear a custom-made plastic face mask. “It was extremely difficult to breathe and very claustrophobic,” Bob said. Still, he persisted with the radiation for six months while working full time (and keeping his illness a secret at work for fear of being sidelined). For a while, he seemed to have turned a corner. Five years later, however, he had a relapse.

With guidance from his oncologist, Bob decided to try what at the time was a new chemotherapy regimen for his cancer: R-CHOP therapy every six months for two years. (The treatment comprises the targeted monoclonal antibody rituximab; the chemotherapy drugs cyclophosphamide, doxorubicin, and vincristine; and the corticosteroid prednisone.) He then embarked on a two-year maintenance program with an infusion of rituximab every six months.

The therapy left Bob extremely fatigued, with severe mucosa in the throat, hair loss, and other complications, but, he said, it “undoubtedly saved my life.”

Today, Bob — who had turned to teaching after leaving the corporate world — is happily retired, living with his wife in The Villages, Florida. He has become a passionate patient advocate, serving as an ambassador for the Lymphoma Research Foundation. Support for medical research is a cause close to his heart.

“I am alive today because some scientists many years ago had the foresight to know that attacking proteins on a cancer cell could prevent it minimally from growing and, maximally, cause it to die off,” Bob said. “That only happened because of the continued research for cancer funded by the National Institutes of Health and the National Cancer Institute.”

Bob said that he worries that the “tremendous inroads” made in fighting blood cancers —including the rise of personalized immunotherapies such as chimeric antigen receptor therapy — could be lost if federal funding for scientific research takes a hit.

“If funding is cut considerably, not only will millions of lives be lost, but America will lose out to other cancer research programs around the world,” he said, sharing his fear that the U.S. could be forced to depend on other countries for breakthrough cancer treatments. “This indeed is a matter of national integrity for us.”