Lubbock Brings Cutting-Edge Cancer Care to Rural Texas

Dylan Cerbantez from Hale Center, Texas is fighting non-Hodgkin's lymphoma for the second time, but this battle looks completely different from his first.

This time, he doesn't have to quit his job or make exhausting trips to Dallas for treatment. That's because Texas Tech University Health Sciences Center and UMC recently brought Dr. Muhammad Bilal Abid to Lubbock, an expert in cutting-edge immunotherapy treatments.

Dylan faces a unique challenge beyond cancer itself. He has Wiskott-Aldrich syndrome, a rare genetic disorder that weakens his immune system and makes standard cancer treatments impossible.

"Dylan's choices for therapy, as he relapsed, were limited. In fact, there were none," Dr. Abid explained. Traditional T-cell therapies don't work for patients whose baseline immune function isn't intact.

Dr. Abid and his team developed a novel approach combining immunotherapy with bi-specific antibody therapy. The dual-action treatment targets Dylan's cancer in two ways simultaneously, working around his compromised immune system.

"This is where the art of medicine really comes in," Dr. Abid said. "When a young man like Dylan does not have treatment options available to him, that really calls for some brave decision making."

During Dylan's first cancer battle, the constant travel to Dallas became overwhelming. His community rallied around him, with his little brother's basketball team and even opposing teams selling fundraiser shirts to help cover treatment and travel costs.

Now Dylan can receive the same cutting-edge care just down the road in Lubbock. "The only reason I didn't want to go to Dallas was because of the drive and traveling after doing chemo," Dylan said. "Having them make it available here, it was a weight off my shoulders."

The Ripple Effect

Dylan's story represents a much bigger shift for rural West Texas. For years, cancer patients in the region faced an impossible choice: skip advanced treatments or uproot their lives for distant cities.

The new UMC cancer center, which opened Friday, changes that equation. Dr. Abid points out that scientific capability isn't what limits cancer treatment success anymore. Access is the real barrier, and some people have it while others don't.

Advances in immunotherapy over the past five years have made treatments like Dylan's possible. But those breakthroughs only help patients who can reach them.

For Dylan and countless others across rural Texas, staying close to home while fighting cancer means keeping their jobs, their support systems, and their peace of mind. The community that wore fundraiser shirts and cheered Dylan on can now be there for his treatments too.

"When the first line didn't work, I did a lot of research on my own," Dylan said. "You get a little bit worried." Now he has both cutting-edge science and his hometown in his corner.