Alan had already been living with a rare auto-immune disease for years, so when he discovered blood in his urine while in California for a WHO concert, he knew something else was wrong. He returned home earlier than planned and through an ultrasound, a urologist confirmed that he had a mass on his right kidney. Alan had the kidney removed but desired a more aggressive follow-up. He came to Dana-Farber and at the time was seeing Dr. David Braun. It was decided that Alan would come in every 3 months to monitor any growth.

Through ongoing scans, some nodules were identified on his left lung and after a biopsy, were identified as cancer in June 2021. At that point Dr. Braun left Dana-Farber for a new position out of Boston, so Alan began working with Dr. Xu on his care plan. Alan had lung surgery a month later and started a clinical trial shortly after. During this time, he began walking more in his free time and after learning about Dana-Farber's Marathon Walk, he signed up to participate in May of 2022. Alan eventually walked the race with Dr. Xu and his team, and others on the team were waiting at the finish line to cheer him on.

Today, Alan is still on the clinical trial and is in complete response status as of March. He’s had some side effects on the trial including weight loss, fatigue, brain fog, loss of taste, loss of smell, and decreased interest in food he used to like. He still walks nearly 5,000 steps a day around the neighborhood or on trails and is planning to get back to 10,000 soon.

Vincent Xu, MD, is a Genitourinary oncologist at Dana-Farber who joined the Lank
Center in 2020. In addition to caring for patients, Dr. Xu also conducts clinical research seeking to improve the treatment and outcomes of patients with genitourinary cancers like prostate cancer, bladder cancer and kidney cancer, among others. He is also an Instructor in Medicine at Harvard Medical School. Dr. Xu received his MD from Harvard Medical School in 2014. He completed residency training in internal medicine at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center,
followed by fellowship training in hematology and medical oncology also at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center.