gatineau’s stefany dupont was a few months into a new job with global affairs canada when she started to feel run down.
it was february 2017.
a recent university of ottawa graduate, dupont had faced off twice before with acute lymphoblastic leukemia, a cancer of the blood and bone marrow, and she worried her familiar symptoms — fatigue, shortness of breath — spelled more trouble. that fear was confirmed days later by doctors, who told her the cancer had returned.
“honestly, i thought there wasn’t anything they could do,” she remembers.
dupont was first diagnosed with leukemia at 13, and went through two and a half years of chemotherapy. five years later, she suffered a relapse and endured more chemo in preparation for a bone marrow transplant that gave her new, blood-producing stem cells.
with a second relapse, at age 22, her options were drastically limited. at the time, an adult whose cancer returned so soon after a transplant faced a dire prognosis:
. one of dupont’s friends had died within months after such a relapse.
“i didn’t have high hopes,” she says. “it was terrible.”
in ottawa, doctors could only offer dupont palliative care. but her hematologist, dr. jill fulcher, and a colleague, dr. natasha kekre, a scientist at the ottawa hospital, knew of clinical trials in the united states where a novel cancer treatment known as car-t therapy was producing some remarkable results. they helped enrol dupont in one of the trials.