Cowboys owner Jones says experimental drug saved him after cancer diagnosis

Dallas Cowboys owner Jerry Jones has told the Dallas Morning News that an experimental trial drug saved his life after he fought stage four melanoma for a decade.

Jones, 82, talked about undergoing cancer treatments in an episode of the upcoming Netflix documentary on the Cowboys: “America’s team: The Gambler and His Cowboys”.

He didn’t give details, but a reporter from the Morning News asked him about it on Tuesday and Jones said he was “saved by a fabulous treatment and great doctors and a real miracle (drug) called PD-1 (therapy).

“I went into trials for that PD-1 and it has been one of the great medicines.

“I now have no tumors,” Jones told the newspaper.

Stage four melanoma refers to skin cancer that has metastasized to other parts of the body.

Jones said he was diagnosed in 2010 and began treatment. Over the next decade, he said, he had two lung surgeries and two lymph node surgeries.

He began the experimental therapy near the end of the 10-year period with PD-1, or Pogrammed Cell Death Protein 1, a type of immunotherapy that according to the American Cancer Society helps “the immune system recognize and attack cancer cells.”

The often outspoken Jones is one of the NFL’s most recognizable owners.

The Netflix series documents his purchase of the Cowboys in 1989, the firing of iconic coach Tom Landry, Jones’s hiring of Jimmy Johnson and the team’s glittering successes in the 1990s — when the Cowboys won three Super Bowls between 1992 and 1995.