Cornelia Tischmacher, a patient from Germany, was out of options.
Advanced lung cancer, no further treatment available, dependent on an oxygen tank, and facing the reality that conventional therapies had failed.
And yet today, just a few months after undergoing a first-of-its-kind double-lung transplant at Northwestern Medicine in Chicago, she shows no signs of cancer.
The surgical team challenged traditional approaches — instead of transplanting lungs one at a time, which carries the risk of cancer cells spreading from the diseased lung to the new one, they removed both lungs simultaneously and implanted healthy ones.
This is not just a surgical innovation — it’s a paradigm shift in treating patients with lung-confined advanced cancer who previously had no options left.
Since the launch of the DREAM program, 70 patients have undergone this procedure, and cancer recurrence has been rare and significantly less aggressive.
This is not only Cornelia Tischmacher’s story.
It’s a powerful example of how innovative thinking, courage, and pushing medical boundaries can offer real hope to patients beyond the reach of standard protocols.
The future of medicine is not only about new drugs.
It’s about rethinking surgery, transplantation, and interdisciplinary solutions that challenge the limits of current approaches.
Could this become the new standard for select patients with advanced lung cancer?
That’s the question we are now starting to ask.
