Myloma treatment
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I went to medical school with a guy who went on to become an oncologist. He was, for a while, the chief of the cancer center at Northwestern. I remember him telling me that the future of cancer therapy is immunotherapy.
This breakthrough combines immunotherapy with genetic engineering.
Hadassah-University Medical Center in Jerusalem’s Ein Kerem has announced an “unprecedented achievement” in the treatment of multiple myeloma cancer – the second-most common hematological disease. It accounts for one-tenth of all blood cancers and 1% of all types of malignancies.
The innovative treatment against the disease, which has long been considered incurable, was developed after a series of experiments carried out in the hospital’s bone-marrow transplant and immunotherapy department in recent years.
“Now, in light of the impressive results of CAR-T treatments, it seems that they have many more years to live – and with an excellent quality of life,” said Prof. Polina Stepensky, head of the department.
The treatment is based on genetic engineering technology, which is an effective and groundbreaking solution for patients whose life expectancy was only two years until a few years ago. They have used a genetic engineering technology called CAR-T, or Chimeric Antigen Receptor T-Cell Therapy, which boosts the patient’s own immune system to destroy the cancer. More than 90% of the 74 patients treated at Hadassah went into complete remission, the oncologists said.My colleague, Carolyn, died of myeloma at the age of 60.
"Now look here, you Baltic gas passer... " - Mik, 6/14/08
The saying, "Lite is just one damn thing after another," is a gross understatement. The damn things overlap.
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An aside.
Great story about Carolyn. One of Chicago's icons was a bookseller by the name of Stuart Brent. He ran a bookstore called "Stuart Brent Books" which was located on Michigan Avenue, just north of the bridge, iirc. He was known to be a crotchety misanthropic type of guy. There are stories that he threw people out of his bookstore because they were too stupid.
My father had a lively literary life with Nelson Algren, Studs Terkel, Ben Hecht, Jack Conroy, and every author he could possible lasso into the store. He actually gave Nelson the title for The Man with the Golden Arm. He got arrested one night with Louis Armstrong, trying to break down the wall of his own bookstore. They needed to bring in a piano.
He taught literature at the University of Chicago, and ran the bookstore there for many years. But probably his main accomplishment was creating
a place in the middle of Chicago where people could talk about books. You can still find people in the city who will tell you that they were just walking past the bookstore, and my father would hi-jack them into the store, telling them, I have just the book for you- it will change your life! And they loved him for it.It came to pass, in the mid 1980s, that he needed surgery, and it fell to Carolyn to be his anesthesiologist. The rest of the details are murky, but somehow, they struck up a relationship that evolved to romance, and, eventually, she ended up marrying Stuart.
Carolyn was Stuart's 4th wife. I believe that all of Stuart's wives died before he did (though he divorced at least one). The running joke in our department was that Carolyn might be the wife who outlives Stuart.
Stuart died in 2010 (age 98).
Carolyn died in 1995.
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I went to medical school with a guy who went on to become an oncologist. He was, for a while, the chief of the cancer center at Northwestern. I remember him telling me that the future of cancer therapy is immunotherapy.
This breakthrough combines immunotherapy with genetic engineering.
Hadassah-University Medical Center in Jerusalem’s Ein Kerem has announced an “unprecedented achievement” in the treatment of multiple myeloma cancer – the second-most common hematological disease. It accounts for one-tenth of all blood cancers and 1% of all types of malignancies.
The innovative treatment against the disease, which has long been considered incurable, was developed after a series of experiments carried out in the hospital’s bone-marrow transplant and immunotherapy department in recent years.
“Now, in light of the impressive results of CAR-T treatments, it seems that they have many more years to live – and with an excellent quality of life,” said Prof. Polina Stepensky, head of the department.
The treatment is based on genetic engineering technology, which is an effective and groundbreaking solution for patients whose life expectancy was only two years until a few years ago. They have used a genetic engineering technology called CAR-T, or Chimeric Antigen Receptor T-Cell Therapy, which boosts the patient’s own immune system to destroy the cancer. More than 90% of the 74 patients treated at Hadassah went into complete remission, the oncologists said.My colleague, Carolyn, died of myeloma at the age of 60.
@George-K said in Myloma treatment:
I went to medical school with a guy who went on to become an oncologist
Here's Steve, talking about a similar therapy:
Link to video"This will ultimately replace chemotherapy..."
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That's a pretty big breakthrough. I don't have access to PubMed through the med school library like I used to, but it looks like the T-cell stuff is being pursued all over the world. One that Mayo was in...
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Waiting for @bachophile to chime in.
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Hadassah. Our competition. Humbug.
(We were doing car-t’s before them )
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Just to be a dick, this is my institution publishing our first car-t as a case report in 2018. Hadassah can eat my shorts.
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/29795432/
Plenty more publications since then
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G George K referenced this topic on
