Word: leukemias
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Arkansas-born John Keener Wadley, who lost his only grandson to leukemia in 1943, has since given more than $2,000,000 to the J. K. and Susie L. Wadley Research Institute in Dallas. When he turned 90, Wadley was confident that the Institute had now struck it rich in cancer research. At his party, he told how nine-year-old Frank Hayes Jr. had been in the last stages of acute leukemia when Dr. Joseph M. Hill began giving him injections of the bacterial extract, L-asparaginase. Within a month, the boy's grotesquely swollen glands had shrunk...
...substances. L-asparaginase, says Dr. Lloyd J. Old of Manhattan's Sloan-Kettering Institute, is unique because it selectively deprives the cancer cells without harming the normal. But dependence upon asparagine does not extend to all types of cancer; it appears to be limited to some forms of leukemia and disease of the lymphatic system...
Allergic Reaction. Probably the first human being to receive the enzyme was a boy in Chicago who was dying of leukemia. After infusions of partially purified enzyme from guniea-pig serum, his white-cell count decreased, and so did the swelling of some of his organs. But his red-blood cells were being destroyed as an apparent side effect and treatment had to be stopped. The boy died of his leukemia. The problem of purification remains. Even the presumably safer material extracted from bacteria, in its currently purest form, causes allergic reactions in mice-as it did to some extent...
...illness was diagnosed last September as acute lymphatic leukemia. Besides the usual abnormalities of white cells and bone marrow, he had a tendency to form tumor masses in the neck and armpits. He was given standard treatment with drugs that produced remission. But then came relapse. Dr. Hill finally decided to use his scant supply of L-asparaginase. In daily injections beginning Feb. 13, Frank Hayes received 213,000 units. On March 16, he developed hives and a lump in his throat, indicating an allergic reaction and suggesting to Dr. Hill that it may be best to give the drug...
Comparable remissions have resulted from all the anti-leukemia drugs now in use. It will take hundreds of treated patients to show whether L-asparaginase can fulfill this one-shot promise. Of the Hayes case, Dr. Hill says: "It will take 63 more years for the boy to live out his normal life expectancy, so we'll consider it a remission until then." In all the world, there is not enough L-asparaginase to treat more than a dozen sufferers. Dr. Hill says that he is making it in Wadley's own labs, besides buying it from Washington...