Crossing the Finish Line

Trinity University cross country teammates Thomas Pillow ’00 and Kristy Davis Bonet ’01, M’02 have cheered each other on in several races. Little did they know when they were students that they would both be fighting cancer as a scientist and a patient, respectively, years later.

In February 2022, Bonet was in the best shape of her life. She ran the Tucson Marathon and qualified for the Boston Marathon, one of her lifelong goals. One day after training, she noticed a lump near her sports bra, which she thought was strange since she had a normal mammogram a few months earlier. Her doctor ordered another mammogram, but the results were difficult to make out because of Bonet’s dense tissue. When Bonet had an ultrasound done, the results showed two lumps in one breast. Bonet’s biopsy confirmed invasive ductal carcinoma, and she was diagnosed with HER2-positive breast cancer, the same diagnosis her mother, Suzette, received in 2004. HER2-positive breast cancer accounts for about 20% of all breast cancer diagnoses.

“My heart just dropped. I started Googling everything and calling people I knew who had been diagnosed with breast cancer,” Bonet remembers. “It was quite the roller coaster to go from such a high of just having finished this marathon and training for Boston and then to be diagnosed.”

Despite her diagnosis, Bonet told her doctors at Arizona Oncology that she still had the goal of running in Boston in 2023. Her team admitted that it was going to be difficult, but they jumped on board to fully support her all the way to the finish line. By keeping her Boston Marathon goal at the front of her mind, Bonet found the motivation to remain positive and stay active as much as she could.

Pillow began working at Genentech in 2009. Known for its emphasis on innovation and collaboration, Genentech, part of the Roche group, is addressing some of the most difficult scientific problems. Over the past 15 years, Pillow has been researching antibody-drug conjugates (ADCs) for the treatment of cancer and infectious diseases. Chemotherapy has been the standard of care for many cancers, killing rapidly dividing cancer cells in the body but also killing healthy cells that are vital to the functions of the body. Essentially, chemotherapy is a poison that the body has to tolerate long enough to allow it to kill cancer cells at the cost of awful side effects for patients. ADCs interrogate the ability of an antibody to selectively deliver a variety of molecules to the interior of a target cell. In other words, ADCs make targeted chemotherapy possible, aiming to take out the bad cancer cells but leaving the healthy cells alone, thereby potentially reducing the side effects common with traditional chemotherapy.

“In the 1990s, Genentech developed an antibody for HER2-positive breast cancer called Herceptin. Herceptin, being the first monoclonal antibody approved for treating solid tumors, changed the treatment of breast cancer. To further improve the targeted treatment of breast cancer, we have been investigating antibody-drug conjugates where one attaches chemotherapy drugs to antibodies like Herceptin,” Pillow explains.

Insurance did not cover the cost of a cold cap for Kristy Bonet’s chemotherapy, so her mother surprised her by paying for it to help save her hair.

As cancer research has advanced, cancer treatments have changed. When Bonet’s mother began treatment in 2005, she had lymph node surgery followed by chemotherapy and radiation. After two years of treatment, her doctor recommended she take Herceptin. She had recently read an article about Herceptin in Time magazine and agreed to try it. When Bonet began her treatment, she did six rounds of TCH chemotherapy, a combination of Docetaxel, Carboplatin, and Herceptin, multiple surgeries, radiation, and 14 rounds of Kadcyla.

Bonet and her mother, now 85 years old, have entered survivorship thanks to the antibody and  ADC treatment they received, the latter a treatment that Pillow’s research has focused on steadily improving. Pillow and Bonet regularly kept in touch with each other throughout her cancer treatment.

“I’m really thankful for smart scientists like Tom who work on these kinds of antibody-drug conjugates because I think targeted therapy is really important for beating cancer,” Bonet says.

Pillow acknowledges that scientific research is a long, drawn-out process, making it challenging to stay motivated some days in the lab. When he hears about successful treatments or meets patients who have benefited from the work he and his colleagues have done, however, it makes it all worth it.

“There’s something so powerful about knowing what you’re doing could have a vital impact on people,” Pillow says. “It brings me to tears almost every time we have patients come and speak at Genentech because I feel like we are making a difference.”

Bonet and Pillow have fond memories of running cross country at Trinity under the leadership of the late Cross Country Head Coach John Garcia Gonzales Jr.

Pillow, like Bonet, is from Arizona. When he was looking at colleges, he wanted to go to a small school with a good chemistry program and a Division III cross country team. Trinity chemistry professor Michael Doyle and track and field and the late former Cross Country Head Coach John Garcia Gonzales Jr. both called Pillow and asked him to visit Trinity.

“It’s really impactful to have someone reach out and say, ‘We want you,’” Pillow remarks.

Bonet also applied to Trinity for its small class sizes, liberal arts education, and cross country team. She majored in humanities with a minor in English for her undergraduate degree and received her Master of Arts in Teaching. She still keeps in touch with Professor Emeritus John H. Moore III ’60 and Angela Breidenstein ’91, M’92, Ed.D., and she credits Professor Emerita Karen A. Waldron with steering her towards a career in special education.

Pillow majored in chemistry at Trinity, and he cites Doyle’s recommendation letter as the reason he was admitted to his doctorate program at Stanford University.

“One of the professors there knew Mike Doyle’s work. That helps when Trinity has professors who are not only really fantastic in the classroom but are also well-known by their peers in their field and in higher education. Dr. Doyle’s support is one of the reasons why I’m where I am today,” Pillow says.

Bonet is thankful for the love and encouragement she has received from the Trinity community, especially her cross country teammates after she took to social media to share the news about her diagnosis.

“Those connections that you make with the team help you through all of those life transitions. We’ve been to each other’s weddings and baby showers, so it’s been really nice to have that support,” Bonet says. “I wondered how much I should share on social media because I didn’t know how it would impact my kids, but putting it out there really helped me. I think it also helps other people affected by cancer because they see me running or at this birthday party happy, not scared of my diagnosis. Same with my mom. She’s this amazing survivor who’s active in her community, acting in plays and musicals, playing piano and ukulele, and doing other healthy-aging activities.

Bonet stayed true to the goal she set for herself at the beginning of her cancer treatment and ran in the 2023 Boston Marathon.

On April 17, 2023, Bonet accomplished her dream and ran the Boston Marathon with her family cheering her on. Her goal was four hours, and she crossed the finish line in three hours and 58 minutes. Now, she is participating in a clinical trial called Flamingo-01, a double-blinded, multi-center study assessing the effectiveness of a vaccine in treating HER2-positive breast cancer. Every month, she travels to the center for blood draws and injections.

“It was an easy decision for me. If I can move the science forward in any sort of way and help other women, I want to do that,” Bonet says.

As Pillow continues his research at Genentech, he finds incredible inspiration from people like Bonet.

“It takes someone like Kristy with this type of bravery and courage to try something that’s unknown to potentially completely change the field of cancer treatment,” Pillow says. “What Kristy has done is really special to me and to so many people.”