by Bobby Anderson, Staff Writer

Lisa Sydnor’s family has a pool going.
As her third retirement begins this month, many of her family members are betting this one will last about as long as the others have.
“I think I was not meant to ever stop … I can’t do nothing,” Sydnor laughed. “I don’t do that well. I’m not a big TV person and I definitely don’t do daytime soaps and game shows. I like to read and I like movies but that gets boring. You can only rearrange your drawers and closets so many times.”
For the past 50 years Sydnor, most recently the senior programs manager for the Salvation Army Central Oklahoma Area command, has been helping people put their lives together.
Whether it’s raising funds or raising families up when they have no place to go, Sydnor has devoted her life to helping others.
“It’s really not about me but about God providing the opportunity to be the conduit,” Sydnor said in her final week. “It hurts my heart and I’m going to miss it terribly but I am tired and it takes lots of energy to do that job. I just don’t have it every day.”
“I’m looking for great things to happen … and I know they’ll take great care of our seniors.”
More than 50 years of Sydnor’s life have been spent in the non-profit world.
She started with the Oklahoma Museums Association in the mid 1970s doing a little bit of everything.
“I was the secretary/bookkeeper/go-to-gal,” Sydnor said.
Her boss gave her the ideas and she was expected to run with them. It was rewarding and Sydnor embraced her autonomy and her mistakes.
“I learned a lot about what not to do and how to do it better,” she said. “I had a really great experience so I thought I was going to stick with this and see where it goes.”
Fortune smiled on her and she began 10 years with the YMCA in fundraising. From there, Oklahoma City University was her new home under Dr. Jerald C. Walker.
“He was convinced we could raise money for anything and because he was convinced that we could we did,” said Sydnor, who managed the many of the university campaigns.
From there the American Red Cross came calling. She was there nearly another decade.
She started out as a chapter solutions manager. It was a title she wasn’t quite sure of.
“My boss said it was a brand new position and this is what we want the end result to be but we don’t quite know how to get there,” she said.
There were another 25 employees just like her across the country in the late 1990s.
Helping mom and pop Red Cross Chapters consolidate and work together was part of her job. She met resistance but still had fun.
She took her skills to Montana and Wyoming and worked her magic again, helping the Red Cross become efficient.
“That was an amazing five years,” Sydnor said. “I had some amazing experiences and we also did disaster fundraising. It was a really crazy time but we had some amazing fundraisers and we always met our goal.”
Sydnor found her herself getting all the credit for the successful fundraisers after disasters.
“It was one of those things were you picked the people and sent them to do what they did best,” she said. “That was one of the most amazing times.”
A year in Dallas and three years at another company and one month of retirement bridged her gap to Salvation Army.
“The Salvation Army has given me … the icing on the cake,” Sydnor said. “I got to help so many people and it was just blessed by God. It seemed like every time we wanted to do something we were able to do it because we got the money and we could serve people.
“I couldn’t have imagined six years ago that I would have the incredible experience I’ve had there.”
Co-workers say she’ll be missed.
“Lisa is soft spoken yet strong willed,” said Keri Griffin, Salvation Army food services manager. “She is a woman of integrity who stands firm on her word. She will confront any and every situation or hardship until the job is finished and everyone around her is satisfied.
“She will definitely be missed here at The Salvation Army but I know her job is not yet done.”
Her tireless effort will be remembered.
“My first impression of Lisa was her heart for the senior population,” said Diane Maguire, senior center coordinator for the North District. “I saw first-hand how that played out every day in her life…she loved them and everything she did was motivated by this love and care.”

story and photos by Bryan Painter

OKARCHE – What is it that for decades has made a child’s ear or nose itch so bad right when a sale barn auctioneer kicks into gear?
Meg Stangl’s father John Murphy, well aware of this mysterious power, had a rule when he took one or more his children to the sale.
“Dad always told us to sit on our hands,” Meg remembers more than 45 years later. “He didn’t want us to look like we were bidding.”
Stangl, who was raised on the Murphy Ranch in the tallgrass prairie up in the Osage, lives in Kingfisher County near Okarche where she and husband Greg Stangl have a wheat farm, with an emphasis on stocker grazing, along with a starter/grow yard.
The joy and the experiences within some trips is more the journey than the destination. Stangl’s story is a lot like that. What she lived and what she learned along the way is certainly a factor in who she is.
Early in the trip
The ranch Stangl grew up on was established in 1896 by her great-grandfather Frank Murphy, in which the small town of Frankfort (where the ranch was located) was named after. His grandson John Murphy would take over in 1954 and four years later marry Linda. There they would raise four children Suzanne, Francis, Chris and Meg, who was born in 1963. On that cow/calf cow operation – which also included horses and a hundred or so ewes – Stangl learned that hard work was “non-negotiable.”
“Growing up it was just known that we all got up at the same time, had breakfast, and headed outside with Dad,” she said. “I had a chestnut mare named Rosie. She was special as my Granddad had bought her for me. I fondly remember the early mornings saddling up. Those early mornings were good times just visiting and watching the sun come up while heading to the pastures. My favorite times were when we worked the calves. I was in charge of giving the vaccinations and keeping syringes full.”
Then there were the sale days. It wasn’t just going to the sale barn café for burgers, fries and homemade pies that made them special. Those days taught Stangl about not only raising cattle, but taking pride in those cattle.
“Not to brag, but Dad usually did very well with his black baldy calves and the auctioneer always announced that the calves selling were from the Murphy Ranch,” she said.
The children weren’t just observers in raising cattle.
“When I was young, we fed cattle small square bales of hay and 50-pound sacks of cubes that we loaded on the back of a flatbed pickup,” she said. “Daddy would put the truck in first gear and tell one of us kids to head towards a certain tree or fence post. We sat on a vinyl covered wooden box that Mom had made so that we could see over the steering wheel.”
Besides the hands-on work of the ranch, Stangl became active in 4-H, showing sheep, cooking, sewing, judging livestock and taking on leadership roles. That passion for agriculture carried on to Oklahoma State University where she worked at the OSU feed mill learning about animal nutrition and in the Agricultural Economics computer department.
“By my senior year, I knew I wanted a career in the agriculture industry and also be an ambassador for agriculture by volunteering with the youth,” said Stangl, who graduated with an Agricultural Economics degree with an option in Farm and Ranch Management.
After OSU she went to work for Stillwater National Bank where she eventually became a lender of small business and agriculture loans. In 1999, Meg married Greg Stangl and moved herself and her, at that time, two young daughters, to his family farm in Kingfisher County.
“I started my own business of packaging SBA (Small Business Association) and USDA B&I (Business and Industry) loans to be able to have time to be with our girls and help Greg on the farm,” she said. “During this time, I also worked with the OSU Extension IFMAPS (Intensive Financial Management and Planning Support) program, doing farm and ranch plans and budgets for farmers and ranchers.”
In 2012, Stangl’s father passed away, and the ranch was passed to Meg and her siblings, with her brothers actively operating the ranch today.
Part of the journey
“Marrying a farmer was all new to me,” said Stangl, having grown up in a different area of the state on a ranch. “I had to learn a lot.”
Again, it’s part of the journey. This is a journey they have taken with their three daughters, Molly, Amy and Catherine.
This is a journey of taking quarters of land that they own and renting other acres of a Centennial Farm from Greg’s dad, who recently retired. This is a journey of implementing no-till or minimal tilling on much of their land for not only conservation purposes, but to reduce equipment wear and fuel costs. They also have their own feed mill and raise a variety of silage crops during the summer months. They retain ownership of some of their stockers sending them on to feedlots, while others are sold at local markets. They have varied their operation in many ways and continue to evaluate those approaches and look for others if needed.
Staying the course
“As I stated earlier, I knew in college I wanted to be an ambassador of the agriculture industry to the youth,” Stangl said. “I feel it is important that all youth, whether rural or big city, have a general understanding of agriculture. Therefore, when the girls got active in 4-H and FFA, so did I.”
As if there is any time left in her days, Stangl is a member of the Holy Trinity Catholic Church, a member of the Oklahoma CattleWomen, a Meals on Wheels volunteer and a coordinator for the Okarche Girls State Delegates.
In many ways this dedication to the family, to the farm and to the community – whether in business or as a volunteer – traces back to the start of the trip and the belief instilled by her father that hard work was “non-negotiable.”

by Vickie Jenkins, Staff Writer

Welcome to Healthy Living and Fitness, (Healthy Living OKC) where their vision is to provide state-of-the-art health and wellness services, empowering adults to become avid health consumers responsible for their well-being and fulfillment of their personal goals.
I spoke with Claire Dowers-Nichols, Executive Director. Claire spent her career developing programs to better service older Oklahomans. Most recently, she spent seven years at the University Of Oklahoma Department Of Geriatrics Medicine; she co-founded the Community Relations Director for the Oklahoman Department of Human Services, Aging Services. Claire serves in a variety of leadership and advisory roles for state and national organizations and is devoted to making her community an ideal place for active adults.
“We are the first Healthy Living and Fitness Center in Oklahoma City as far as being a MAPS 3 project. We have been here at this location for about 18 months,” Claire said. “The next location to build one will be in south Oklahoma City. OK. We actually have about 5,275 members now and about 630 of them visit our center every day. The growth in numbers of people has grown so fast. It is amazing! It was an answered need for seniors to have a place like this. We couldn’t be more thrilled!”
I was curious to know why Claire left her job to come work here. She replied with a positive answer. “This is definitely where I want to be. Love it! I have always been interested in the aging process. Now, it seems like aging is such an important part of life. One goal is to make aging sexy! Everyone wants to stay healthy with their diet and exercise. This is just a way of helping things along. Aging is such a wonderful process; it’s a form of self-expression now. Why, we have a member that is 100 years old and she is in better shape than me,” Claire said with a laugh.
The mission at Healthy Fitness and Living is to provide a facility and programming that will improve the physical and emotional wellness of northwest Oklahoma City adults with programs that help adults connect and provide a community through social wellness activities and initiatives, to provide access to professional and recreational physical fitness activities, to provide education and support on current adult related issues, to offer wellness coaching and social programming that will nurture emotional health and to reverse current poor health statistics.
“Let me tell you a little more about Healthy Living and Fitness,” Claire said. “Members are accepted if they are 50 years and older. We offer a variety of classes; the latest and greatest exercise equipment, fitness classes, water aerobics, guitar lessons, ukulele lessons, line dancing, arts and crafts, jewelry making, ballet, belly dancing, Tai Chi, yoga, Zumba, creative writing, drama class…we have just about anything you would want! We also have pool tables, and large rooms that can be rented out for special occasions. There’s even a group that meets each week with someone explaining how to keep up with your grandchildren by learning to use an iPhone. There are 9 different fitness instructors that rotate their schedules. The hours for Healthy Fitness and Living, Inc. are Monday through Thursday 5:30 a.m.-8:00 p.m., Friday, 5:30 a.m.-7:00 p.m. and Saturday 7:30a.m.-4:00 p.m. We are closed on Sundays. Membership cost is $30.00 a month single, $50.00 a month for couples. No annual contract. Payment can be made month to month. Most of our members really like that part,” Claire said.
What is your favorite part of your job? I ask Claire. “I really enjoy the art programs that we have here. When I see the members doing their art work, it is very special. It’s also very therapeutic too. It doesn’t matter if you are with a group of old friends, or a group of new friends, it is good for all; it’s just another way of socializing.”
Claire does a little bit of everything at work. One of her challenges is keeping up with the growing number of members. “It’s a good challenge though, definitely not a problem,” she said with a smile. We try to have at least 4 special events throughout the year.” (Car shows, special events). “Our members come here for several different reasons. Diet and exercise, socializing with others, to lose weight and learn how to eat the right way, to relieve stress, and just to have FUN,” Claire comments.
Who knows…maybe it’s time for ME to take those guitar lessons.

Lewis Perkins, RN, BSN, MSN, DNP is named Chief Nursing Officer for INTEGRIS Baptist Medical Center and it’s affiliated entities.
Lewis is currently the System Vice President of Nursing at Norton Healthcare in Louisville, Kentucky where he has worked since 2011.
Lewis has an incredible career in nursing leadership with significant MAGNET experience, he serves on the APRN Practice Committee for the Kentucky Board of Nursing and brings a wealth of nursing leadership experiences and innovative ideas to the table.
Lewis will begin his duties at INTEGRIS on Oct. 1. He and his wife (also a nurse) have a son in college and a son in high school who will be re-locating to Oklahoma City at the end of the school year.

The Fred Jones Jr. Museum of Art on the University of Oklahoma Norman campus opens its 2018 fall exhibition Ticket to Ride: Artists, Designers, and Western Railways, on Oct. 5. The exhibition features more than five dozen works by artists and commercial designers created between 1880 and the 1930s, the height of western railway travel.
A public opening reception will take place at 7 p.m. Thursday, Oct. 4, with a presentation by the exhibition curator and Adkins Associate Curator, Hadley Jerman. Following the talk, attendees will enjoy live music, food and a chance to win two free, roundtrip tickets on the Heartland Flyer.
The exhibition highlights how artists and railway companies together influenced lasting perceptions of the American West, particularly the Grand Canyon, the Pacific Coast and the Northwest. “Designers and artists sought railway patronage to achieve their own ends as much as railways courted image-makers for wanderlust-inducing imagery,” says Jerman. “This exhibition brings together, often for the first time, artists and designers who were engaged in parallel projects promoting western travel but also making use of railway patronage to promote their own careers and interests.”
Some, like celebrated American landscape painter Thomas Moran, sought an opportunity to camp and paint in dramatic western landscapes. Maynard Dixon, best known today for his easel paintings of the Southwest, produced many poster and billboard designs for multiple western railways which he exchanged for free transportation via “artist passes.” Women, including the Tacoma-based painter and activist Abby Williams Hill and St. Paul muralist Elsa Jemne, found in railway patronage an escape from turn-of-the-century social constraints. Other artists like W. Langdon Kihn and his teacher, Winold Reiss, bought into misguided period notions that Native populations were on the brink of “vanishing” as victims of modernity. In railway patronage, they found an entre into the indigenous communities they aimed to record.
The images in this exhibit, then, simultaneously reflect corporate railway concerns along with their creators’ enthusiasm for dramatic landscapes and Native communities, particularly in the American Southwest, Montana and western Canada. This exhibition features paintings, studies, posters and graphics that emerged from the parallel relationships between artists and commercial designers with rail companies in the transnational American West.
Guest speaker Cliff Bragdon, nephew of Langdon Kihn, whose portraits are featured in the exhibition, will give a presentation prior to the opening at 3 p.m. Wednesday, Oct. 3, in the Mary Eddy and Fred Jones Auditorium at the museum. Exhibition curator Hadley Jerman, author of the Ticket to Ride catalogue, which will be on sale when the exhibition opens, will give a gallery talk at 1 p.m. Tuesday, Nov. 13.
The museum also will use use the exhibition as a jumping-off point for its new holiday train event, All Aboard, from 6 to 8 p.m. Thursday, Dec. 13. Model trains resembling Route 66 will take over the entire Sandy Bell Gallery in the museum. Included in this new family holiday event will be Santa Claus pictures, banjo lessons, a cookie and hot cocoa bar and much more. This family-friendly event starts at 6 p.m. with a train-lighting ceremony beginning at 7 p.m.
More information about this exhibition and related programs is available on the
museum’s website at www.ou.edu/fjjma.
The Fred Jones Jr. Museum of Art is located in the OU Arts District on the corner of Elm Avenue and Boyd Street, at 555 Elm Ave., on the OU Norman campus. Admission to the museum is complimentary to all visitors, thanks to the generosity of the OU Office of the President and the OU Athletics Department.
The museum is closed on Mondays. Information and accommodations are available by calling (405) 325-4938 or visiting www.ou.edu/fjjma.

by Kaylee Snow

HOLLIS – It only took 21 years for Jane Testerman to land her dream job.
She only wishes it could have happened sooner.
Testerman, who now helps her husband Charlie full time with his three businesses – Testerman Farms, Circle T Trucking, and Testerman and Son Harvesting – says her lengthy career in teaching was only holding her back.
While she spent her days impacting children at school, she was running herself in circles between keeping farm records and working at school.
Testerman was anxious to be outside if it was a nice day. She loved being outdoors.
Testerman’s husband is a fourth-generation custom harvester of wheat and corn. With a partnership between him and his father Doug, Testerman Farms consists of about 2,000 acres of cotton and 3,000 acres of wheat. Additionally, the Testermans have a small herd of cattle and the trucking business, where they haul grain, fertilizer and cotton modules.
Testerman recalls the challenges she faced trying to juggle teaching and agriculture.
“They’d start cutting wheat in May before school was ever out,” she said, “but I was ready to go with them.”
With her husband often gone on harvest, she kept things afloat back home, managing paperwork and directing trucks. The record keeping kept her busy.
“Plus then we had our livestock in the barn, our show stock,” she said.
The Testermans’ three daughters, Blair, 25, Mylah, 20, and Hadie, 14, who are “quite the characters,” all exhibited sheep and pigs, but cattle was their main focus.
“When we got a little more involved in the stock shows, I had to take off work to go, and so that was hard for me,” Testerman said.
A Farming Family
The Testerman daughters have been farming since they were babies, literally.
“Blair had been around the harvesting since she was a little over a year old,” Testerman said. “Mylah was about 9 months old when we started harvesting, and Hadie was a week. I had her, and a week later we left on wheat harvest.”
Rhonda Ellison, who has known Testerman for many years through Harmon County OSU Extension, said, “Jane was expecting their second child during one harvest season, but it didn’t slow her down. As each of their three daughters came along they were each taught the value of hard work, following in the footsteps of their parents and grandparents.”
Testerman says the reason she loves agriculture is because of the next generation.
Since the girls have traveled and have grown up around the hired help, they have learned valuable life skills. Testerman is convinced agriculture was the best place for her children.
“They lay down at night and they say their prayers, and they’ll be praying for the hired hands, listing their names off,” she said. “So we taught them a lot of right from wrong by working on the farm and being around the hired help.”
All the girls can run the equipment – combines, tractors and grain carts.
“I mean it’s definitely a family business,” Testerman said.
The girls often get frustrated with boyfriends who do not understand farming.
Testerman will tease the girls, asking, “Why get a boyfriend if you know more than the boy does?”
She knows without a doubt her kids know how to work because of their experiences with agriculture. It has exposed her children to outstanding people as well.
“Agriculture – whether it’s farming, harvesting or livestock showing – all of that puts the kids around good people that are hardworking,” she said.
Her kids understand the need to pray for rain – to keep livestock alive.
“Everybody prays for rain, and it’s not just so our yard will grow,” Testerman said. “They all know where it comes from and that it takes hard work to get those things.”
“We’ve been to every swimming pool from here to Colorado,” she laughed, “and I cook during harvest. Sometimes I’d run a tractor grain cart, and then it got to where we had so many hired hands you can’t afford to eat out all the time, or somebody would have to get off equipment and run to town to get food.”
Life After Teaching
On top of keeping records and directing trucks, Testerman now keeps all computer software up-to-date for accounting purposes for all three businesses. As technology has advanced, she now enters the amount of fertilizer and water used by each sprayer into a computer system. She picks up parts and runs the hired hands around – who say they would rather have Charlie in charge because Jane works them too hard.
“Since I quit teaching, my role has quadrupled,” Testerman said, who describes herself as farm hand and secretary.
She is busier now than she was when she was teaching.
“I learned early on that learning all of those things was not necessarily a good thing,” Testerman laughed, because the more she learned, the more she was put to work.
Because the Testermans have “lots of different irons in the fire,” they have had to cut back.
“We’ve gotten more involved in local farming and trying to stay home more,” she said. “We figured out it was harder to travel so much doing custom harvesting and then tend to your own farming at home.”
Currently, the Testermans still custom harvest 10,000 to 12,000 acres, all within a 60-mile radius of home and the Texas Panhandle. This past year, the crops overlapped.
“We were still picking corn in Texas, picking our cotton here, and hauling the cotton modules,” she said. “So we were spread very thin.”
With 2017’s cotton harvest being the largest since 1933, Testerman said it feels like “the longest cotton harvest ever.”
“We haul cotton round bales for three or four different gins locally,” she said. “We start that in October, and that usually ends in February. We’ve had a couple of years that it ended in March, but this year it lasted until the end of April.”
Memories
Testerman’s earliest memories of agriculture come from two places: her dad and 4-H. Her dad, Larry Odom, was the district conservationist for the Harmon County Natural Resources Conservation Service from 1972 to 2008. She exhibited sheep through 4-H, which is where she first fell in love with agriculture.
Now her kids have shown livestock for 16 years, and by the time her youngest graduates, she will have attended 20 Oklahoma Youth Expos.
She laughed and said, “I expect a plaque.”
Some of her fondest memories include her daughters’ stock show success. Blair had two breed champions with her steers.
“In 2013, Mylah won the youth expo with a steer, all her sheep made the sale, and she had the third Chester in the sale,” she said. “In 2018, Hadie exhibited the bronze medallion steer.”
FFA and 4-H are very important to the Testermans, who are currently working with the superintendent to build a multi-purpose facility. Martin Lewis, Doug’s first cousin, passed away this past year and left money to be donated to a good cause, which involved youth and/or animals. The Testermans chose to use that money for the facility, and this enabled the school to start building.
“The school can use it for their activities,” Testerman said. “The community will be able to use it, and then it will be for livestock shows. That way they can host some jackpot shows if they want.”
She also organizes the Keaton Owens Memorial Scholarship in honor of her nephew. She gathers funds each year, which are then awarded to FFA and 4-H students to help fund next year’s show project.
“Agriculture has kind of consumed our household and everything that we do,” she said.
Like all farmers, the Testermans face challenges every day, from drought and erosion to the rising costs of equipment and chemicals.
“The people that think farmers just set their own hours and throw a little fertilizer and water down and the crop grows, it’s not like that at all,” she said. “It’s a lot of hard work. There’s a lot of prayer in farming. Please let it rain. Please don’t let it hail. It seems like I probably count on the Lord above in farming more than any other thing I’ve been involved in … You’re not just doing it for yourself. You’re counting on it for other people.”

Last month, Sen. John McCain died from glioblastoma, a form of brain cancer. The same disease took the life of Sen. Edward Kennedy.
But here in Oklahoma, Norman’s Mike Schuster continues to live with the disease. As he nears the three-year anniversary of his diagnosis with the deadly cancer, he’s already doubled the life expectancy for patients with glioblastoma.
Doctors can’t say why Schuster has lived where others have succumbed to the disease. But they believe it may be because of an experimental drug he received—one that was developed by scientists at the Oklahoma Medical Research Foundation.
For Schuster, the first clue that something was awry came in the fall of 2015, just past his 50th birthday. While at work, he passed out with no warning.
He was rushed to the hospital, where an MRI revealed a brain tumor the size of a kiwi just above his right eye. “I’d been healthy all my life,” Schuster said. “No medical issues at all. I just couldn’t believe that this was happening.”
Of the more than 120 types of brain and central nervous system tumors, Schuster’s type, known as a glioblastoma, is the most aggressive. The standard treatment regimen involves surgery to remove as much of the tumor as possible, followed by radiation and chemotherapy. Still, the tumor almost always grows back.
With treatment, the median survival—which means half of patients live longer, and half die sooner—is 12 to 18 months. Only 1 in 20 glioblastoma patients will live five years.
In a procedure that lasted six hours, doctors removed as much of Schuster’s tumor as they could. When Schuster regained consciousness, his surgeon explained that he’d succeeded in excising most of the tumor. But, he said, like most glioblastomas, this one had “tentacles.” Tiny arms of the tumor had grown into surrounding brain tissue and could not be removed.
Schuster began follow-up radiation treatment at the Stephenson Cancer Center at the University of Oklahoma. Even though Schuster couldn’t feel the electromagnetic waves pulsing through his brain, “you could smell it,” he said. He also started chemotherapy, taking a pill called temozolomide. Together, the treatments were intended to kill the tumor cells that remained in the fissures of his brain.
“If you leave even a single cancer cell in the brain, it can regrow,” said Dr. James Battiste, the neuro-oncologist who oversees Mike’s care at Stephenson. “The brain is fertile soil for these tumors. That’s why chemo and other therapies are so important.”
Following radiation—doctors limited his treatment to six weeks for fear of triggering a secondary cancer—Schuster stayed on temozolomide. But just after the one-year anniversary of his diagnosis, an MRI revealed a new tumor.
A second surgery once again removed the primary tumor. This time, doctors kept Mike awake throughout the procedure to ensure they didn’t damage crucial areas of his brain. Still, many glioblastoma tentacles had escaped surgeons’ reach, remaining lodged in Schuster’s brain.
Schuster knew those tentacles were, in essence, seeds that could sprout another full-blown tumor in a matter of weeks. He told Battiste he was willing to try anything to beat back the glioblastoma. He’d read about clinical trials of experimental medications. Was there one that might help him?
Battiste, in fact, was testing a new drug that, he said, “just seemed suited for Mike.” It was an investigational medication for glioblastoma that had been born just down the block from Stephenson, in the labs of the Oklahoma Medical Research Foundation.
Known as OKN-007, the experimental medication was discovered by OMRF scientists Drs. Rheal Towner and Robert Floyd. In pre-clinical glioblastoma experiments, the compound dramatically decreased cell proliferation (spread) and angiogenesis (formation of new blood vessels), and it turned on the process of removing damaged cells so they can’t become cancerous.
“Those are the three major factors needed in a cancer drug,” Towner said. “This compound seemed to do all of them.”
Oblato, Inc., a New Jersey subsidiary of Korean biotechnology company GTreeBNT, has acquired the rights to OKN-007 from OMRF. It will move ahead with further trials of the drug in glioblastoma.
At Stephenson, Battiste has been cautiously optimistic about the performance of OKN-007 in Schuster and his other patients. “We’ve gone to the highest dosage levels the FDA would allow, and we haven’t seen any negative effects from the drug.” Although evaluating the medication’s effectiveness at stopping the regrowth of tumors is not a primary focus of the early phases of the trial, “it’s helpful to see things looking good” on this front, too, he said.
In August, Schuster celebrated his 53rd birthday. When he sees other patients with brain tumors, he said, they appear thin and frail. He, on the other hand, has added 15 pounds since beginning OKN-007 infusions. “I’ve had no side effects at all,” he said. “I’ve also been able to get back to the gym and am doing some yard work. I feel really good.”
He continues to travel to Oklahoma City each week for infusion treatments with OKN-007. “I really appreciate all of the support we’ve received from Stephenson and from people at OMRF,” he said.
While fighting glioblastoma has brought numerous challenges, Schuster said the experience has also revealed silver linings. “My friends and family and their prayers for me have turned into blessings.”
Of course, neither Schuster nor his doctors can know for sure if the drug is responsible for keeping his cancer at bay. Nor can they say if, or when, the disease might recur. “I can’t worry about stuff,” Schuster said, “that’s out of my control.”
Still, he feels certain he made the right decision when he opted to participate in the clinical trial. “Let’s just say I’ve been very blessed. It’s pretty cool how this stuff is working.”