‘We’re making history,’ Asheville native being treated with ‘promising’ cancer vaccine

By Justin Berger

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    ASHEVILLE, North Carolina (WLOS) — An individualized treatment for cancer?

Catie King, an Asheville native who is patient zero in a new cancer vaccine trial, was determined when she walked into Dr. Thaer Joudeh’s office on Dec. 27, 2023.

It’d been six and a half years since she first was diagnosed with ovarian cancer and nearly two years since it reoccurred.

Joudeh drew four vials of blood to monitor King’s response to the first round of a vaccine she received a month prior — a vaccine to treat her cancer.

“They’re just looking for circulating tumor cells to see what her levels are,” physician assistant Paulene Nichol said.

King is one of three patients participating in a basket trial designated for solid tumor cancers. The FDA defines a basket trial as a drug studied across multiple cancer populations.

The other patients, from Wisconsin and California, have brain and breast cancer, respectively.

King’s involvement in the basket trial is one of happenstance.

Riley Polk is president of Orbis Health Solutions, the biotechnology company behind the vaccine King is receiving.

In 2017, Polk’s 18-year-old daughter Carson and King were being treated at the same cancer facility.

Orbis founder Dr. Tom Wagner had spent the previous two decades developing cancer immunotherapies specifically for melanoma, but they were getting ready to expand the study.

“At the time, they were thinking we’re just going to get into ovarian cancer vaccines, and that’s when we all just went, ‘Please keep Catie in mind when you get to that point.’ And so now it’s great that it’s not just ovarian, it’s any kind,” Catie’s mom Leslie Green said. “It’s any solid tissue.”

Polk did keep Catie in mind.

She’s received the first two rounds of a vaccine made out of her cancer tissue.

“(I) felt great after the first round,” King said. “Didn’t have any issues. I saw where you had done the injection site, there was just a tiny little red bump for a couple of days and that went away.”

“Great,” Joudeh said. “It’s a very safe vaccine. I mean, it’s created out of your tissue.”

“And no fever or temperature about 14 days in?” Nichol asked.

“No, nope,” King replied.

King said with this vaccine she goes home and there is nothing that changes in her daily routine. She added there is nothing she can’t do the same day.

This is an important change for her after undergoing low-dose chemotherapy, among other alternative therapies, during her initial diagnosis years ago because King and her husband, Jim, are in the farming business.

They run a pasture poultry operation, Fireside Farm, which in 2020 expanded to include grass-fed sheep and pasture piglets.

But King said it hasn’t all been easy.

“Hard days are more of that emotional side of things, and, with this vaccine, there haven’t been any hard days,” she said.

It has been a difficult year for King and her family.

“We lost our son unexpectedly six months ago,” Green said. “So, this year has been very difficult for us.”

The family has leaned on faith.

“We can look back and see His faithfulness and knowing that in the midst of all our sadness and sorrow He will carry us through,” Green said. “He will and He is. And so as hard as it is, we’re OK.”

The support is not just coming from inside their family either. Jim said their friends have been “awe-inspiring.”

“It’s evidence that there’s still a lot to be thankful for and a lot to cling to,” Jim said.

“Look at where we are six years later, and she could potentially be one of the ones who’s involved in something that saves not just a few lives, but hundreds, thousands, or more,” Green said. “That’s the hope and the prayer.”

King’s appointment ended after an hour-long monitor period, but her story is nowhere close to being over.

“I think Catie’s making history today,” Joudeh said.

“We’re making history, yeah,” King said.

King will receive the third round of injections later this month and then she’ll get three booster shots at three-month intervals.

On Wednesday, News 13 sits down with the man behind the medicine, Dr. Tom Wagner, who got his first cancer grant during the Kennedy administration.

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