How much does it cost?

Is Bexxar the same class of drugs as Yttrium-ibritumomab (Zevalan).  My wife
was treated with Zevalan over a year ago which got her into total
re-mission.  How do these 2 drugs compare as far as their effectiveness?  My
wife has Mantle Cell NHL.
Source: University of Michigan Health System     Released: Tue
01-Feb-2005, 09:30 ET
Embargo expired: Wed 02-Feb-2005, 17:00 ET
Printer-friendly Version

New Treatment Rivals Chemotherapy for Lymphoma
Libraries
Medical News   Keywords
LYMPHOMA CANCER DRUG BEXXAR
Contact Information

Available for logged-in reporters only
Description

A new form of treatment for lymphoma that takes a fraction of the time
of traditional chemotherapy with fewer side effects caused tumors to
shrink in 95 percent of patients, a new study by researchers at the
University of Michigan Comprehensive Cancer Center found.

Newswise - A new form of treatment for lymphoma that takes a fraction
of the time of traditional chemotherapy with fewer side effects caused
tumors to shrink in 95 percent of patients, a new study by researchers
at the University of Michigan Comprehensive Cancer Center found.

Patients with advanced-stage follicular lymphoma - a cancer generally
considered incurable - who had not been previously treated with any
other form of therapy received a single course of treatment with the
Bexxar therapeutic regimen, a radioactive antibody injected into the
bloodstream that targets and kills cancer cells. Of the 76 patients
enrolled in the study, 95 percent responded to the treatment and 75
percent had a complete response, meaning no evidence of cancer
remained. More than three-quarters of patients with a complete
remission were disease-free after five years.

Results of the study appear in the Feb. 3 New England Journal of
Medicine.

"The results of this treatment, which essentially takes only one week
to complete, rival any kind of treatment that's been used for
follicular lymphoma, including chemotherapy regimens that take months
to complete. It's very well-tolerated by patients and we saw complete
remission in the majority of patients lasting for years," says lead
study author Mark Kaminski, M.D., director of the Leukemia/Lymphoma
Program and the Multidisciplinary Lymphoma Clinic at the U-M
Comprehensive Cancer Center.

Kaminski and his colleague Richard Wahl (formerly at U-M and now at
Johns Hopkins University) developed the Bexxar regimen, which received
approval from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration in June 2003 to
treat follicular non-Hodgkin's lymphoma after other treatments have
failed. The newly published research involves Bexxar as a first-line
treatment for this disease.

Non-Hodgkin's lymphoma, the nation's sixth leading cause of cancer
death, is a cancer of the lymph system, which is part of the immune
system. Lymphoma spreads easily through the lymph system and the
bloodstream and consequently tends to be widespread when it is
diagnosed. Traditional treatment often involves intensive chemotherapy,
or a combination of chemotherapy and the monoclonal antibody rituximab.
These treatments are usually given every three weeks over a span of up
to six months and can cause many unpleasant side effects, including
nausea, hair loss and infections.

Follicular lymphoma is the second most common type of non-Hodgkin's
lymphoma and is not considered to be curable using these traditional
treatments; even after patients initially have a response to treatment,
the disease almost always comes back and becomes more difficult to
treat.

Bexxar, whose chemical name is tositumomab and iodine I 131
tositumomab, combines an antibody that seeks out cancer cells, and a
radioactive form of the element iodine. When injected, it travels like
a guided missile through the bloodstream to bind to a protein found on
the surface of the cancerous cells. The radiation zaps these malignant
cells with minimal exposure to normal tissues.

With the Bexxar therapeutic regimen, a patient receives an injected
test dose of radioactive Bexxar to determine how that patient's body
processes the tagged antibody. Nuclear medicine scans are used to
assess how quickly Bexxar reaches the tumor and how quickly the
radiation disappears from the patient's body. One to two weeks after
that initial dose, the patient then receives a custom-tailored
therapeutic dose, and therapy is considered complete. The most common
side effect is a temporary lowering of blood counts several weeks after
the treatment. There is no hair loss and nausea is rare.

Results from this study are even more promising than results using
Bexxar after other therapies have failed. In those studies, 70 percent
of patients responded to Bexxar and 20 percent to 30 percent saw a
complete remission. Bexxar is marketed in the United States by
GlaxoSmithKline.

"Given how much better this treatment worked as first-line therapy in
our study, moving this treatment up earlier in the course of a
patient's illness should be strongly considered instead of using it
as a last resort or not at all. These results support the notion that
there's a real possibility of putting chemotherapy on the back burner
for this disease," says Kaminski, a professor of internal medicine at
the U-M Medical School. "New studies can now be designed to begin to
test this possibility," he adds.

In addition to Kaminski, U-M study authors are Melissa Tuck, research
associate for Hematology/Oncology; Judith Estes, M.S.N., N.P., nurse
practitioner in the lymphoma clinic; Charles W. Ross, M.D., associate
professor of Pathology; Kenneth Zasadny, Ph.D., Nuclear Medicine;
Denise Regan and Paul Kison, nuclear medicine technicians; Susan
Fisher, project associate in Radiology. Other authors are Stewart Kroll
from Corixa Corp.; Arne Kolstad, M.D., Ph.D., from the Norwegian Radium
Hospital, Oslo; and Richard L. Wahl, M.D., from Johns Hopkins
University School of Medicine.

Funding for the study was from the National Cancer Institute, the
National Institutes of Health and Corixa. The University of Michigan
holds patents for the Bexxar therapeutic regimen, which is marketed by
GlaxoSmithKline under a licensing agreement. U-M receives royalties on
sales of Bexxar, a portion of which goes to Kaminski and his
co-inventors.

For information about non-Hodgkin's lymphoma, visit
www.cancer.med.umich.edu/learn/lymphomainfo.htm or call the Cancer
AnswerLine at 800-865-1125. For information about Bexxar from its
manufacturer, call 877-4-BEXXAR.

Reference: New England Journal of Medicine, Vol. 352, No. 5, pp.
441-449

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

? 2005 Newswise.  All Rights Reserved.

------------------------------------------------------------?--------------------

Who loves ya.
Tom
Jesus Was A Vegetarian! http://jesuswasavegetarian.7h.com
Man Is A Herbivore!
http://pages.ivillage.com/ironjustice/manisaherbivore
DEAD PEOPLE WALKING
http://pages.ivillage.com/ironjustice/deadpeoplewalking

Source: University of Michigan Health System     Released: Tue
01-Feb-2005, 09:30 ET
Embargo expired: Wed 02-Feb-2005, 17:00 ET
Printer-friendly Version

New Treatment Rivals Chemotherapy for Lymphoma
Libraries
Medical News   Keywords
LYMPHOMA CANCER DRUG BEXXAR
Contact Information

You do realise this is radiotherapy, don't you, Tom?