LOWVELO sponsor riding for the future of cancer research, legacy of his father

His father had a funny way of breaking news. He always did it in the car.

“When I found out he had cancer, he had just picked us up at the airport,” said LOWVELO sponsor and rider Brent Tabor. “When I found out that the chemo treatment he’d been receiving for the better part of five years wasn’t working, I found out in the car. And when I found out that he had found a cure for his indigestion – that was in the car!”

And then one day, Ed Tabor picked his son up from the airport and explained that his lymphoma was no longer responding to treatment.

“He said, ‘You know, I’m pretty much at the end here but there may be a chance for them to do a Hail Mary pass,’” remembered Brent.

That Hail Mary pass was an immunotherapy called CAR-T cell therapy. At the time, this was a brand-new treatment approved for use in some blood cancers, and it required Ed to have T-cells, a type of white blood cell, removed from his body and shipped across the country from MUSC Hollings Cancer Center where he was being treated, to Washington, where they would be reengineered in a lab and turned into cancer fighters.

 

During the process, T-cells are introduced to a new gene that allows them to bind to specific proteins on cancer cells and essentially trains them to hunt and kill cancer cells. They are multiplied into the hundreds of millions in the lab and then reintroduced into the body where they continue to multiply as they fight off cancer.

CAR-T cell therapy is potentially the cancer treatment of the future – and the Tabor family was thrilled that their patriarch would have the chance to try it after fighting cancer for nearly a decade.

“We were all there when they put the T-cells back in him,” said Brent. “And it was absolutely incredible. It was a very euphoric experience – one that was just fascinating, and the level of care and everything was just amazing.”

The first few months after the treatment were rough on Ed. He experienced cytokine release syndrome, a condition where the immune system gets overactivated, causing a multitude of symptoms that can range from mild, flu-like symptoms to potentially life-threatening complications like high fever, low blood pressure and organ failure. But Ed pushed through.

“His recovery was nothing short of incredible,” said Brent. “He was essentially cancer-free. Our whole perspective on life changed. We stopped talking about the medicine on a daily basis. We started thinking about the rest of our lives. He started thinking about attending his grandchilden’s high school graduations and things like that. It was just nothing short of a miracle.”

Ed lived another year in good health and lived it to the fullest, traveling with his wife, Judy, a breast cancer and melanoma survivor, and their children. And of course, he soaked up time with his 10 grandchildren and two great-grandchildren – the loves of his life.

 

But then, he started experiencing a new complication – myelodysplastic syndrome (MDS), a type of blood cancer that affects the bone marrow and can be linked to previous chemotherapy treatments.

“His marrow was essentially starting to die,” said Brent. “He had experienced many, many years of other chemotherapies prior to getting the CAR-T therapy, and it was too hard on his whole system.”

This left Ed with one option – a bone marrow transplant. It’s rare for someone who is 80 years old, like Ed was, to get a bone marrow transplant, but it’s becoming increasingly more common when doctors consider the overall health of the patient. For Ed, it worked. The transplant was successful.

“We are so thankful to the donor and what she was able to do and provide to give him more time with us,” said Brent.

That time with his family stretched for another year, until his body started to experience a series of complications from the transplant and years of treatment. It proved to be too much for Ed’s body to handle, and he passed away in January of 2024.

“God, he was a wonderful parent. The kind of person you could confide in. The kind of person that you would be able to talk to, and he would listen and he had a lot of answers,” said Brent. “He’s greatly missed. He was a huge part of my life. He was the person I would call on the phone every day and losing him left a very big hole that’s not going to be easy to fill.”

Ed was his family’s hero: a Naval aviator, a pilot and a musician. They describe him as extremely intelligent and well-read. But despite all of that, his biggest accomplishment was always his family and the memories they had built together.

"You don't want other people to suffer. You don't want other people to have to watch people suffer and that has really pushed me with LOWVELO.”

Brent Tabor

He was also very interested in his cancer and chose to take part in the CAR-T cell therapy in hopes that his experience could contribute to advancing knowledge and improving treatment for others.

“His understanding of what he was doing and how it would affect the progress of curing and beating cancer was essential and very inspiring to me,” said Brent. “And he had an incredible relationship with his doctors, Brian Hess, M.D., and Praneeth Baratam, MBBS. Their approach to this was very open and transparent and I think that was essential to his level of care.”

At the time Ed went through CAR-T, it was being researched in many places but being done in just a few. It was a more time-consuming process to ship the cells out and wait for them to come back. Since that time, Hollings has started an in-house CAR-T cell clinical trial, thanks to LOWVELO funding. It’s one of many reasons why Brent rides and why the company he started with his wife, Kaylee, The Design Group, is a sponsor of the ride.

“Everything just said ‘We’ve got to do this. This has got to happen,” said Brent. “It’s a big deal to us to be part of what’s happening at Hollings. We want to see this thing advance.”

And aside from the science, Brent now knows how the hope that research provides can be important to other families going through what his family has. It’s the reason he pedaled in his dad’s honor last year, the reason he has enlisted his family and his entire company to take part this year and the reason he continues to advocate for LOWVELO.

“When someone close to you is sick, there is a natural drive – a feeling – to do everything you can,” said Brent. “You go with the program. You go with the treatment. And you care for the loved one. But sometimes you wish you could do more and especially when that person passes, that drive can become very strong. You don't want other people to suffer. You don't want other people to have to watch people suffer and that has really pushed me with LOWVELO.”

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