Medical Breakthrough — Fighting Cancerous Cells
Published: December 30, 2004
Each year nearly 22-thousand patients are diagnosed with a cancerous brain tumor.
Doctors often use surgery and chemotherapy to destroy the tumor.
Now researchers are making sure those tumors don’t grow back.
Ask Valarie Hill what she thinks of medicine and she’ll be honest.
“I am sick, sick, sick, sick, sick, sick, sick, sick, sick, sick, sick of medicine,” says Valarie.
She has good reason to be. Her first brain tumor came in 1993. It recurred in 1995, 2002 and again in 2003.
“Look to my finger this way. Look this way. Okay, good,” says her doctor.
Her last tumor was removed six months ago. She received chemo and an experimental treatment called interferon alfa 2-B recombinant. It activates the body’s immune system.
“This is another new frontier of therapy beside surgical, radiation, chemotherapy. Immunotherapy is the next frontier to fight against the cancer,” says Dr. Surasak Phuphanich.
Three days a week, Valarie gets a shot of the medicine. She hopes it keeps her tumor away for good.
“But I don’t have not cancer?” asks Valarie.
“We can’t see it on the scan, okay? So right now, we call you that you’re in the clinical remission,” says Dr. Phuphanich.
Dr. Phuphanich says he’s able to increase patients’ lives by 50-percent.
“I don’t think we can win them all, but the ones that we save and can maintain quality of life, I think that they keep me in this business,” he says.
“I fell wonderful. I’m blessed and everything. Everything is just alright now,” says Valarie.
Even though she IS sick of it, Valarie know medicine is her best shot at survival.
Right now, Emory University in Atlanta is the only site studying this medicine for brain tumors.
Researchers hope to enroll more patients.
The drug is already approved for treatment of some leukemias, melanoma and chronic hepatitis.
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