Dallas Cowboys owner Jerry Jones beat stage 4 cancer after battling the disease for a decade, the 82-year-old billionaire has revealed.
Now Jones is crediting an experimental drug for saving his life from stage 4 melanoma.
‘I was saved by a fabulous treatment and great doctors and a real miracle [drug] called PD-1 [therapy],’ Jones told The Dallas Morning News. ‘I went into trials for that PD-1 and it has been one of the great medicines.
‘I now have no tumors.’
Jones underwent four surgeries over the last decade, include two on his lungs and two lymph node surgeries, the Morning News reports.
It’s unclear when he started the PD-1 [Programmed Cell Death Protein] experimental trial. The treatment is aimed at helping the human immune system fight cancer cells by blocking PD-1, thereby helping the all-important T cells to better recognize and combat cancer cells.
A stage 4 melanoma diagnosis indicates skin cancer cells metastasized to other parts of the body. Typically patients with that diagnosis are given a five-year survival rate of 35 percent, according to The American Cancer Society.
Cowboys owner Jerry Jones beat stage-four cancer after battling the disease for a decade
Jones made this revelation to the Morning News during a wider interview about the team’s new Netflix series, ‘America’s Team: The Gambler and His Cowboys.’
Among the 40 hours of recorded interviews contains one clip in which Jones admits to receiving cancer treatments at New York cancer treatment center MD Anderson ‘about a dozen years ago.’
The episode centers on Jones’ volatile relationship with former Cowboys coach and his own former Arkansas teammate, Jimmy Johnson.
Jones had fired legendary coach Tom Landry in 1989 and replaced him with Johnson, who won two Super Bowls in Dallas before feuding with the team owner.
Later, while undergoing cancer treatment, Jones was advised to ‘make a list of 10 people who can just boil your blood’ and wish for them to have greater things in their life.
‘At No. 1, I wrote down the name “Jimmy Johnson,”‘ Jones said, as quoted by the Morning News. ‘I went back to the female doctor a few weeks later and said, ‘I can’t get past that first mother…’
Jimmy Johnson (left) was the coach who turned the Cowboys around for Jones in the 90s
Johnson was replaced by another of Jones’ former Arkansas teammates, Barry Switzer (left)
Jones did take the high road with Johnson upon the latter’s retirement from Fox Sports back in March.
‘From the time we were in college until the time we were holding up those Super Bowl trophies, I knew Jimmy Johnson could be anything he wanted to be, and he has,’ Jones said in a staement. ‘Some of the most exciting times in my life I shared with Jimmy, and I cherish them.
‘As one of the most gifted people I’ve ever been around, Jimmy has blazed a remarkable, unique trail that is now deeply embedded into football and broadcasting history.
‘Congratulations on your incredible career Jimmy, and I wish you well in your fourth quarter my friend. You will always be a winner!’
After firing Johnson, Jones famously hired another former Razorback, then-Oklahoma head coach Barry Switzer, to become the Cowboys next coach. Switzer would win a Super Bowl with the Cowboys in January of 1996.
