I was! I've now been infused twice with 1100mg of petosemtamab / MCLA-158 (https://beta.clinicaltrials.gov/study/NCT03526835), on Sept. 27 and then Oct. 12. The next is Oct. 25. For the first week I had no apparent reactions, and then a rash erupted on my face, chest, and back. That's pretty normal for EGFR drugs, and the rash was (and is) itchy and annoying but not unbearable. To treat it, I inject an antibiotic called doxycycline (which is used against acne bacteria) into my peg tube and use a a topical steroid. At the bottom of this post: https://jakeseliger.com/2023/10/16/how-do-you-say-goodbye/ there's a photo showing some of what's happening to my face.

So, overall it's going pretty well, and I feel physically better than I did on chemo and Keytruda—a low bar, but I'll take whatever improvements I can get. The next CT scans are scheduled for Nov. 21, but unless I'm responding to petosemtamab in a pretty major way, they'll probably be ambiguous. The median time to respond is 1.8 months, so it'd be surprising to see big changes between the Sept. 5 CT baseline CT scans and the Nov. 21 scans. Two tumors are physically protruding from my neck, which is disconcerting, but they aren't painful.

The FDA apparently wants to see how the 1100mg and 1500mg petosemtamab doses differ, and I got randomized to the lower dose. That isn't necessarily bad: more of a drug can be deleterious relative to right dose.

I wasn't NDA'ed, so I'm assuming I can talk about what's going on. I'm a bit surprised by the lack of an NDA; I've signed NDAs for three-person startups who want grant writing services for a Dept. of Energy Small Business Innovation and Research (SBIR) proposal, but nothing WRT this.