Word: lymphomas
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...cancer vaccine is not like the measles shot you get as a kid. Instead of inoculating a healthy person against a foreign body like a virus, cancer vaccines use parts of tumors to help the patients' immune systems recognize diseased cells. Follicular lymphoma, a generally slow-moving cancer of the immune system that affects roughly 5,000 Spaniards each year, presents an especially enticing target for vaccine researchers because its cells all carry a protein, called an idiotype, that distinguishes them from their healthy counterparts. Mixing the idiotype with other substances that trigger immunological responses, "the vaccine presents a tumor...
Follicular lymphoma cannot currently be cured, but with chemotherapy and other treatments, a patient can usually achieve remission. The cancer almost always returns, however, and each subsequent remission tends to be shorter than the previous one. In 2001, Bendandi began vaccine therapy on 25 patients who had achieved a second remission with chemotherapy. The vaccine did not have any effect on five of the subjects, but the other 20 who did respond received a total of 10 vaccinations over 26 months. "Partway through the study, one of my patients - a hairdresser - came to me and said, 'I know the treatment...
...than most. In a five-year-long study - its results were described as "remarkable" by the Journal of the National Cancer Institute which published the report last September - the Pamplona-based group demonstrated that a customized vaccine could extend, perhaps indefinitely, the cancer-free period for patients with follicular lymphoma. In the wake of that success, Bendandi is preparing another study, one with an even more ambitious goal...
...vaccine for follicular lymphoma is not new. Stanford University's Ron Levy pioneered the effort more than 25 years ago, demonstrating that anti-idiotype antibodies could be produced in a laboratory and used to create a vaccine for humans that would trigger an immune response. In 1999 Kwak, then working at the National Institutes of Health (nih), modified the vaccine in a way that makes it easier for the immune system to recognize. His results were striking: the vaccine eliminated the residual tumor cells left after chemotherapy in 15 of his 20 patients. Now Bendandi, who worked with Kwak...
...championship season, a baseball, and the last part—the best part—a letter. Lucchino, a man whom Cosgriff had never met, had himself survived cancer against the odds. Twice—in the mid-80’s with non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma, for which he received a bone marrow transplant, and in the 90’s for prostate cancer—Lucchino had experienced the twin hells of cancer and chemo...