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Lymphoma Flashback: 2003

Among the many interesting facts that I learned during my last year of treatment at City of Hope is that the scientific methods, techniques, and procedures from which I so measurably benefited resulted from decades of research and discovery. So, from time to time, I like to take a look back at some of those events and developments of the past that contributed inexplicably to the care that I received and the outcome that was obtained. While my care regimen did not include radiation (as mentioned below), this is one of the many milestones in the evolution of acceptable care protocols that are now employed to help cure patients with lymphoma:

[ALTACITIES.COM] FLASHBACK - 2003 - Newly Approved Therapy Successfully Targets Non-Hodgkin's Lymphoma: Mark Kaminski, M.D., and his colleagues first began developing a new treatment for non-Hodgkin's lymphoma more than a decade ago. Now, finally, Kaminski is treating his first patients with Bexxar since the drug won approval from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration.

"The approach we took with Bexxar is an innovation," says Kaminski, co-director of the Leukemia/Lymphoma/Bone Marrow Transplant Program at the U-M Comprehensive Cancer Center. "Prior to Bexxar, most of our treatment strategies were based upon chemotherapy and external beam radiation therapy, which is effective – but not always – and certainly toxic to patients."

Unlike traditional chemotherapy and radiation, which both kill healthy cells along with the cancer cells, the Bexxar therapeutic regimen uses radiation to target the cancerous cells. Patients receive a single treatment injection, instead of multiple rounds of treatment over several months of chemotherapy, and there are very few side effects.
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Hodgkin's lymphoma
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