USMNT Legend Kasey Keller opens up about his non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma journey

Casey Keller, who was the U.S. men’s national soccer team’s goalkeeper during four World Cups, spoke about being diagnosed with non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma in 2010 and the subsequent journey. (Photo: Courtesy of Casey Keller)

Courtesy of Casey Keller

Casey Keller was known for his numerous saves from 1990 to 2006 as a goalkeeper for the US Men’s National Soccer Team during four World Cup Finals. But Keller, 56, has so far remained vocal about his diagnosis of non-Hodgkin lymphoma in 2010 and the subsequent journey. He has thankfully been in remission since 2021 and credits much of that preservation to Brianze. So much so that he teamed up with Bristol-Myers Squibb, the makers of Brianzee, to “Treatment is the goal” campaign.

Keller’s non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma was first diagnosed in 2010

I recently spoke with Keller about this journey that began in 2010. “I moved home from Europe to sign with the Seattle Sounders, a two-year contract,” he recalls. “It was the 18th, 19th year of my professional football career. So, I’m kind of in my early 40s, and let’s just see how I feel, where I’m at, you know, that kind of thing.”

“Well, at the end of that season, I had a little bit of a problem with my hip, and what I didn’t want to do was sign a one-year extension, if I was going to spend that whole year on the treatment table in my 20th year of professional football and go out like that,” Keller continued. He added: “So I said to the team doctor, let me take a look at my thigh, to make sure it’s not serious and then I’ll be happy to sign.”

Keller then got an MRI of his hip. “I got a phone call at about 2 p.m. from the team doctor saying, ‘Casey, I just want to say your hips look like we would expect from someone who has played 700 professional games. But I have a question for you: Have you had lunch yet? “,” Keller recounted. Yes, Keller’s doctor didn’t follow up by saying something like he knew a great burger restaurant. No, instead, his doctor had a concern, saying, “We saw something on the MRI, and if you haven’t had lunch yet, we wanted you to come back to the hospital for a biopsy,” Keller said.

Keller had already eaten lunch by then, so the biopsy had to be scheduled for 6 a.m. the next morning. Several days later, the pathology reading came back as non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma. Keller then met with an oncologist who recommended monitoring him and going from there.

“Well, I didn’t feel like I could sign a new contract,” Keller recalls. “My wife and I decided not to tell anyone. We didn’t tell the kids, we didn’t tell my parents. And with what the doctor said, we didn’t know how long it would take.” So, Keller spent the next eight years getting regular checkups including imaging scans to follow up on what was happening with the NHL, i.e. non-Hodgkin lymphoma and not the NHL.

What is non-Hodgkin lymphoma?

Now, at first glance, it may seem strange to be told that you don’t own something. After all, your doctor won’t usually tell you that you don’t have diarrhea or that you have a broken head. But lymphomas are divided into two main categories of Hodgkin and non-Hodgkin lymphoma, and include more than 70 different subtypes of lymphoma.

Lymphoma is a cancer that affects the lymphatic system, As previously described in Forbes. Your lymphatic system is essentially your body’s safety and cleaning system. Think Avengers with brooms, mops, vacuum cleaners and a sewer system. It includes a network of lymphatic vessels that run throughout the body – picking up debris and potential invaders – and lymph nodes as well as the spleen, thymus, tonsils, adenoids and bone marrow. Your lymphatic system is filled with a police force made up of different cells that serve different purposes for your immune system such as white blood cells. Lymphomas arise when white blood cells known as lymphocytes become cells that grow and multiply abnormally.

Treatment for NHL depends on the type of lymphocytes involved and how widespread and aggressive the lymphoma is. Potential treatments include radiation, chemotherapy, immunotherapy, targeted therapy, bone marrow transplantation, and so-called chimeric antigen receptor T-cell therapy, also known as CAR-T therapy, which we’ll talk more about in a moment.

“Watch and wait” is also a possibility if the lymphoma doesn’t seem to be moving very quickly, which has been the case for Keller for a while. Keller retired from professional football in 2011, continuing a career in which he played for a host of top European teams such as Millwall, Leicester City, Rayo Vallecano, Tottenham, Borussia Mönchengladbach and Fulham, at the time the NFL’s all-time leader with 102 appearances. Then he switched to sportscasting and waited, waited, waited and got to watch for a while.

After eight years of watching and waiting, Keller began receiving treatment

Things changed in 2017. Keller began to lose weight, his lymph nodes began to grow larger and tests began to show cancer developing. This prompted him to undergo the first round of treatment in 2018. Since his football career – or football as it is known as it is known elsewhere – was filled with many successes, it was natural that he would have at least a little confidence in the success of the treatment. “My full expectation was that these were the best results we had ever seen,” Keller said. “Instead, it was, ‘We saw a little bit of improvement,’ and from that point on, it basically started this crazy cycle of no success, some success, really good success where I had a treatment where some of the tumor loads were 15 centimeters in diameter, and in the middle of the treatment it went down to 3 centimeters, and by the end of the treatment, they were back to 5 or 6, things like that.”

Going through treatment was also difficult. After all, no one equates chemotherapy with pleasure. “For example, during the coronavirus crisis, I was undergoing one of the worst chemotherapy treatments you can get with a continuous drip for 96 hours,” he said. “Because they were moving everyone out of the hospitals, I had a pump in a fanny pack and then I would come back every day and get a 24-hour chemo bag.” He then described how he called an NFL game while on chemotherapy call.

In 2021, Keller received Brianze and achieved remission

Things changed a few years after his treatments. His lymphoma turned into large B-cell lymphoma, a specific type of NHL. This was around the time the FDA cleared Brianze in 2021. “I had a good relationship with my doctor, and I thought, ‘This is the right person, we want to get you in (for Brianze),” Keller recalls. “And I would tease him because we were going through these things, ‘We can go this way, or we can go that way,’ and I would always be like I was letting my medical license expire, so I would weigh in on you a little bit and the direction you wanted me to go.”

Keller then became one of the first to try Breyanzi after it hit the market and within two months his lymphoma went into remission. At week 14, there was no evidence of disease. He’s had a clean sheet ever since, meaning follow-up tests found no further evidence of lymphoma.

What is brianzi?

Breyanzi is the brand name for Lisocabtagene Maraleucel – in case you want to say something with more syllables. It is a CAR-T cell therapy. It works through what BMS has called the “three B’s”.

The first B is for “borrow”. Doctors borrow some white blood cells, especially T cells, from blood samples through a process known as leukocytophoresis or leukapheresis.

The second B is for “Boost”. Doctors then take these T cells and then genetically modify them, essentially boosting them so that they start expressing CAR, which is not something with wheels, but a protein on the surface of T cells called a chimeric antigen receptor that can then specifically target the CD19 protein found on cancer cells.

The third letter “b” stands for “benefit.” Finally, doctors return these modified pryinzi T cells to your body where they then multiply. It is very exciting as they can find cancer cells and prompt your immune system to destroy the cancer cells. This is the benefit.

Of course, everything with CAR-T therapy is not easy. Breyanzi certainly brings the risk of various side effects, including those that may be life-threatening. During treatment, Keller himself suffered a fever as high as 102 degrees. There are also things like low blood pressure, diarrhea, vomiting, cytokine release syndrome, and neurotoxicity Among BMS warnings.

For now, Keller is grateful that he doesn’t have to “always think about the next appointment, the next treatment.” He’s sure to enjoy this year being the year of the FIFA Men’s World Cup with the United States, Mexico and Canada hosting it. Expect Keller — who was inducted into the National Football League Hall of Fame in 2015 — to receive a lot of questions about the tournament and get involved in different ways. Additionally, “I have a house in the mountains in Idaho, and I was asked to join a new professional soccer team in Boise as a minority owner,” Keller says. It’s safe to say that soccer or soccer still keeps the legendary goalkeeper very busy.