Marlena Murphy: Defying stage four cancer with determination

They are two of the most chilling words a patient with cancer can hear: stage four. Marlena Murphy, though, was undeterred. The Atlanta resident and clinical mental health counselor simply had too much left to give to the world.

“I realized that I still had a purpose for my life, and this was going to be another situation that I’m going to have to go through,” says Murphy, who was diagnosed with a recurrence of breast cancer that had originally surfaced in 2018. “Not that I want to go through it, but I know it’s not going to be the end.”

Atlanta resident Marlena Murphy is undergoing treatment for breast cancer at Winship Cancer Institute of Emory University. 

Five years ago after Murphy first detected a lump in her left armpit, she was diagnosed with “triple-negative” breast cancer — meaning the cancer cells lacked estrogen and progesterone receptors and made little to none of the HER2 protein. Triple-negative breast cancer tends to be more common in Black women, and it tends to grow and spread more rapidly than other kinds of breast cancer.

But Murphy had a plan. “I knew that Emory had a big reputation in Atlanta as a research hospital. And so automatically, my care was with Emory,” she says. At Emory’s Winship Cancer Institute, Murphy underwent surgery, radiation and chemotherapy, all while beginning graduate school. She completed treatment in late 2019 and earned her master’s in clinical mental health counseling this past May. But in between, something else happened — she discovered another lump, this time in her right armpit.

Dr. Kevin Kalinsky is the director of the Glenn Family Breast Center at Winship Cancer Institute of Emory University.

‘It’s like a smart drug’

Such instances continue to demonstrate the need to advance cancer treatment technologies. Winship Cancer Institute of Emory University is leading the way.

For many years, chemotherapy was the only treatment oncologists could offer patients with triple-negative breast cancer. Winship Cancer Institute of Emory University has helped change that by pioneering clinical trials that have led to the development of powerful immunotherapy drugs. So when Murphy was diagnosed the second time with metastatic triple-negative breast cancer, Dr. Kevin Kalinsky had more tools at his disposal.

“By the time I first saw her, she had cancer that also involved other parts of the body,” says Dr. Kalinsky, Director of Breast Medical Oncology at Winship Cancer Institute. “And so she went on to receive not just chemotherapy but also immunotherapy, which is essentially an intravenous treatment that tells the body to find and destroy cancer cells. She’s had an exceptional response to this treatment. This is one of those situations where the science has really changed in the last few years.”

Winship Cancer Institute of Emory University is the lone facility in Georgia with a National Cancer Institute Institute Comprehensive Cancer Center designation, the highest federal rating a cancer center can achieve, and the gold standard for cancer programs. Research shows that a patient’s chances of surviving cancer are up to 25% higher when starting treatment at an NCI-designated facility. Winship has also been a prolific contributor to cancer immunology research, investing in a new cell manufacturing laboratory to further the development of immunotherapy treatments.

“There are studies in which our research team has participated that have led to the approval of specific drugs,” Dr. Kalinsky says. “As an example, there’s a class of drugs called antibody-drug conjugates, which are essentially antibodies that are linked to chemo. You can think of them as smart drugs, where instead of giving chemo, it’s giving an antibody that acts like a GPS, which tells the chemo where to go. It’s like a smart drug. Members of our team participated in those clinical trials, which led to the approval of these drugs before they were widely available.”

Such breakthroughs illuminate the defining difference between an NCI-designated Comprehensive Cancer Center, such as Winship of Emory, and other hospitals.

“We have research from across the spectrum, right from the lab to clinicians, doctors and nurses, who don’t have just the aim of offering outstanding clinical care, but also are focused on developing the next generation of treatments,” Dr. Kalinsky adds. “It’s patients like Marlena, patients who participate in clinical trials, who lead to the approval of these drugs.”

While Murphy was not involved in a clinical trial, the immunotherapy she’s receiving, Keytruda, was pioneered by those patients who were. The results so far? “I’ve had a great response,” Murphy says, “because currently, my scans show no evidence of disease. So the treatment is working. And it’s just amazing.”

Finding the balance

These days, Murphy is always on the go. On Mondays, through a partnership with Richmont Trauma Center, she works at Crossroads Community Ministries, an organization that assists individuals dealing with different levels of homelessness. Soon she’ll begin providing clinical mental health counseling at TurningPoint Breast Cancer Rehabilitation for patients and survivors of breast cancer, roles she knows all too well. She also serves as program manager for an organization called GRASP that works to connect advocates and cancer researchers, in the hope of fostering breakthroughs and getting more people into clinical trials.

That’s how Murphy was introduced to Dr. Kalinsky, who is also involved in GRASP.

“He’s not just a doctor, he’s a human being,” Murphy says. “He shows you his human side. He is very, very kind to his patients. I’ve referred patients to him because he just comes across as a human being. And we are all human beings at the end of the day.”

Winship Cancer Institute at Emory Midtown is a new full-service cancer care center in Midtown Atlanta.

In May, Emory opened a new front in its progress against cancer with the debut of Winship Cancer Institute at Emory Midtown, a 17-story cancer care center built around the twin goals of higher survival rates and better patient quality of life. Designed to ease the burden of the cancer treatment experience, the new center conveniently provides all the patient’s doctors’ visits and infusion treatments in a single care suite. There, patients have access to the latest treatments, specialists with expertise in their type of cancer and the opportunity to participate in groundbreaking research.

“The balance is always to offer patients treatment that keeps the disease under control, and then for them to also have a good quality of life,” Dr. Kalinsky says. “And I think that that’s what Marlena has. She works full-time, she went to school, she is having an active life. That’s the kind of balance that we hope to achieve with our patients.”

Murphy is only one example of what’s possible at Winship, thanks to cutting-edge cancer care and her dogged persistence.

“My story says that you can still have faith and hope in what you believe to be true.”