I had just months to live after cancer diagnosis, the reason I’m still here should instil hope in everyone

A father-of-one who had just months to live after being diagnosed with America’s most common cancer has been cured thanks to an experimental treatment he received in Mexico. 

In May 2023, Allen Rapert, now 62, was diagnosed with squamous cell carcinoma — a type of skin cancer — that affects about 1million people in the US every year.

Doctors said the cancer was stage four, with a tennis ball-sized tumor below his eye that had eaten through his skull bone and was growing quickly into his brain.

They recommended surgery to cut out most of the tissue on the right side of his face, his nose and his right eye ball, which would have left him permanently disfigured.

He would also have had to undergo a course of chemotherapy.

Even then, doctors said they were not sure the cancer would be cured — with studies suggesting only six percent of patients live four years or more.

Fearing for his life and appearance, Mr Rapert decided — after an online search — to skip the surgery and instead opt for an experimental treatment.

He went for five rounds of the treatment in Mexico, and was declared cancer-free just seven months after his diagnosis.

‘I feel as though I am on the ground floor of changing cancer treatments forever,’ the Missouri native told DailyMail.com.

‘When someone’s knocking on death’s door, and you go from that to, “you’re cured,” it just doesn’t seem medically possible.’

Mr Rapert was diagnosed with squamous cell carcinoma, a type of skin cancer that affects the cells on the outer layer of the skin.

It is the second most common form of skin cancer behind basal cell carcinoma — which emerges in the deepest layer of the skin — and typically affects fair-skinned individuals, often appearing in frequently sun-exposed areas like the face, ears, neck and hands. 

Just five percent of cases are diagnosed at stage four.

Mr Rapert said he had symptoms of the cancer for about a year before he was diagnosed, after his right eye started struggling to close properly and had regular infections.

But it wasn’t until he woke up one morning and found the eye had blurred vision that he went to doctors.

His symptoms, along with a lump below his eye prompted testing, which revealed the diagnosis. 

The cancer was about the size of a ping pong ball when it was first diagnosed, but after it was biopsied it started to grow rapidly, reaching the size of a tennis ball. 

After hearing the original recommendations from doctor and wanting to get a second opinion, Mr Rapert sought treatment at the Williams Cancer Institute in California, which uses an experimental two-step method to treat cancer.

In the first stage, it uses pulsed electric field ablation — where short, intense pulses of electricity are fired into cancer cells, causing the cells to begin to die.

Then, weakened, the tumor is injected with up to 12 immunotherapy drugs, which help the immune system recognize cancer cells and launch an attack against them. 

Although it is US-based, the Institute administers its treatments in Mexico as it uses some immunotherapy drugs that are not approved in the US.

Mr Rapert was accepted as a patient by the Institute and flown to their center in Cabo in June 2023.

He had three rounds of the treatment over five weeks, with his tumor shrinking by half.

After his first round of the treatment at the center, his face swelled significantly, which the doctors said was a sign his body was responding to the drugs and fighting the cancer. 

About a month after his third round of treatment, he was flown to the Institute’s center in Mexico City where he had two further rounds of the treatment.

In December 2023, just seven months after his initial diagnosis, scans showed his cancer had completely disappeared.

He has had four scans a year ever since to check for cancer, and not one has detected a cancer cell.

Mr Rapert was thrilled and amazed with the results, and organized a cruise trip to the Caribbean to celebrate with his girlfriend.

Dr Jason Williams, who has pioneered the new treatment, told DailyMail.com: ‘We know that injecting these drugs into tumors works really well. That is my experience and that is how we have used them in studies with mice.

‘So, why is it the case that with humans we test it intravenously? Why are we treating human patients differently?’

In humans, immunotherapy drugs tend to be administered into the blood stream and circulated around the body rather than directly into the tumor.

Dr Williams says injecting them into the tumor would make them more effective, however, because it is more likely to show the immune system where the cancer is.

The Institute told DailyMail.com it has had an upwards of 85 percent success rate in treating advanced stage four cancers using its method.

It is the third case of an advanced cancer being cleared by the Institute that DailyMail.com has reported, after a doctor reversed his stage four pancreatic cancer in six months after being treated at the Institute and a professor reversed her stage four breast cancer.

The treatment cost $130,000 in total, which Mr Rapert said he paid for by taking money out of his retirement savings — saying there was no point in leaving it untouched because he would likely die before using it. 

Dr Williams told DailyMail.com he hopes to be able to treat more patients like Mr Rapert: ‘I see a few patients with this type of cancer, but I do not see a ton of them.

‘We should see a lot more really because it would be a great cancer for us to treat, more people should be coming.

‘I think we are in the north of 85 percent success rate in many or all of the solid cancer types, like breast, pancreas, colorectal, all of your main cancers.

‘This is a really, really high success rate, and in most of our patients the cancers have already progressed to stage four.’