Dallas Cowboys owner Jerry Jones credits an experimental drug for saving his life after he was diagnosed with stage 4 melanoma.
“I was saved by a fabulous treatment and great doctors and a real miracle [drug] called PD-1 [therapy],” Jones, 82, told The Dallas Morning News in a story published Wednesday, August 13. “I went into trials for that PD-1, and it has been one of the great medicines. I now have no tumors.”
The revelation comes before the Tuesday, August 19, release of the Netflix documentary America’s Team: The Gambler and His Cowboys. In the series, Jones talks about undergoing cancer treatments at MD Anderson in Houston, but does not offer specifics.
He told the Dallas Morning News that his diagnosis came in 2010 and that over the next 10 years, he underwent two lung surgeries and two lymph node surgeries. While melanoma refers to skin cancer, the stage 4 label indicates it had metastasized to other parts of the body.
A Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center study published in 2024 suggested a five-year survival rate for those with stage 4 melanoma could be as high as 50 percent thanks to experimental treatments, up from the 35 percent rate listed on the American Cancer Society’s website.
“You don’t like to think about your mortality, but I was so fortunate to have some great people that sent me in the right direction,” Jones told the media after the Cowboys practiced on Wednesday. “I got to be a part of a trial that was propitious. It really worked. It’s called PD-1, and it really, really, really worked.”
PD-1, or programmed cell death 1, is a protein found on T cells. PD-1 therapy helps patients’ immune systems block the protein, which enables T cells to recognize and attack cancer cells.
“It ate my hips up,” Jones said of his treatment. “I had to have both hips replaced because it was rough on your bones, but other than that, I’m so proud to get to be sitting here with you guys and be getting to do what we do. … But [mortality] was in the back of your mind.”
First-year Cowboys coach Brian Schottenheimer, a cancer survivor himself, told reporters that he was glad Jones shared his story because it “gives people hope.” Schottenheimer, 51, had surgery to treat thyroid cancer at age 28 when he was an assistant coach for the San Diego Chargers.
“It gives people the strength to say, ‘OK, you can beat this. You can do that,’” he said. “And when you have that type of diagnosis, to have that hope and that ability to think, ‘I can fight through this and maybe I can catch a break and get lucky,’ that’s great.”
‘ The preceding article may include information circulated by third parties ’
‘ Some details of this article were extracted from the following source www.usmagazine.com ’
