Emma Dimery was ready to dream big. It was 2013, and the then-23-year-old recent college graduate was excited to “begin” her life. She was living in her own apartment in Minneapolis and working at the Walker Art Center by day and bartending by night. 

“I was happy to be spreading my wings for the first time and to be independent after college,” Dimery recalls. 

But her aspirations were about to be put on hold. A routine appointment revealed some abnormalities in her blood work, which led to more extensive testing and, ultimately, a shocking diagnosis: advanced-stage colon cancer. 

“When you’re 23, it never occurs to you that you could have something as serious as cancer,” Dimery says. “At that age, all I could really think was, ‘How is this going to affect my immediate life, like dating and my job?’ No 23-year-old can understand the gravity and exactly what a cancer diagnosis means for you long term.”

For Dimery, it meant more than a decade of cancer treatment, including multiple rounds of chemotherapy, radiation, immunotherapy and combinations of all three.

Nine years into her treatment, Dimery’s cancer persisted. So in 2022, Emil Lou, MD, PhD, a professor in the University of Minnesota Medical School’s Division of Hematology, Oncology and Transplantation and the M Physicians oncologist who was directing Dimery’s care, asked her to consider enrolling in a promising clinical trial. 

“I was doing immunotherapy every other week for several years, just treading water. That was when I started to lose hope. My situation was feeling bleak,” Dimery remembers. “When he told me about the clinical trial, I did not hesitate. I was all in.”

Translating hope

In a bustling research lab at the University of Minnesota Center for Genome Engineering, Branden Moriarity, PhD, and Beau Webber, PhD, are pursuing novel ways to address hard-to-treat cancers like Dimery’s. 

One such treatment uses genetically engineered tumor-infiltrating lymphocytes (TILs) — naturally occurring immune cells — to treat advanced-stage gastrointestinal cancers. 

“We use [gene editing] technology to change the genetic code of these cells to give them new properties that allow them to more easily identify and then kill the cancer cells,” Moriarity explains.

These TILs were at the center of the clinical trial that Lou recommended to Dimery and 11 others. As part of the trial, cells were extracted from Dimery’s and other enrolled patients’ tumors. Then those cells were sent to the lab and genetically modified to become more effective cancer killers.  

“Our job during the trial is to identify the specific TIL from each patient’s tumor that can then be extracted, modified and then redeployed to attack their tumor,” Webber explains. 

After Moriarity and Webber enhanced the patients’ cells in their lab, they turned to David McKenna, MD, the medical director of the University of Minnesota’s Molecular and Cellular Therapeutics Facility, to manufacture a cancer-fighting army of cells for each patient. 

“Not every institution has this,” McKenna says. “Our group is world-class. Whenever I speak around the country, around the world, people know: the University of Minnesota cell  and gene therapy manufacturing is amazing.”  

More than half of the people enrolled in the clinical trial experienced halted tumor growth. 

Dimery’s cancer disappeared entirely. 

“After so many years of such intense treatment and bad news, dashed hopes and, ‘It’s not working,’ all of a sudden — poof! Within a matter of less than three months, there was no evidence of disease,” Dimery says. 

Finally, she could begin to see a future free from cancer. 

Pressing play on life

Less than a year into her initial treatment in 2013, Dimery met her now-husband, Andrew, at a beer fest in Madison, Wisconsin. She laughs when she recalls trying to casually mention her cancer diagnosis while trying to flirt with him.

“When I met him, he and his friends thought I was lying about having cancer,” Dimery says. “Which, I mean, it’s a crazy thing to say in that kind of party atmosphere. But we’ve been together ever since.” 

Dimery says Andrew’s support, as well as her family’s, pushed her to keep going during her treatment. During her hospitalization for the clinical trial, Dimery and her husband also bought a house. 

Three years into Dimery’s remission, the couple is grateful for where they’re at — and looking forward to what comes next.

“I’m excited to make plans and get to dream. I never thought that I’d even be able to leave Minnesota because of treatment,” Dimery says. “I’m loving my work right now, and I’m throwing myself into that.” 

Andrew agrees and says that even little moments feel memorable nowadays.

“It’s freeing to get to do ‘normal things’ like going on bike rides around the lakes and not worry so much about her health,” Andrew says. 

In February, Dimery joined Lou in New York City, where they celebrated being named two of Time magazine’s 100 Most Influential People in Health for 2026. She says she hopes her story inspires others to pursue treatments through clinical trials. 

Now 37 years old, Dimery is excited to figure out who she is as a cancer-free adult.

“I don’t want to go back to [who I was before]. I was still a child who didn’t know where she was going or what she wanted out of life,” Dimery says. “I spent many of my formative years as a cancer patient, so that will always be a part of my identity, for better or worse. There were silver linings throughout my journey, and those are the things that got me through everything.” 

Dimery making plans for what comes next and enjoying the life she’s creating: working as a designer and custom art framer and spending more time with her husband, their dog, Fergie, and the rest of their family. 

“I have this beautiful, one-in-a-million opportunity, this gift of life that has been given to me,” she says. “I’m just happy to be here now. That’s my motto these days, but my aspirations and sense of self grow every day.”