Hello, Friends! It is an exciting time in oncology as more new and improved therapies for some of our most resistant cancers are being developed and approved.
On April 29th the U.S. Food and Drug Administration approved Provenge for the treatment of metastatic, castrate-resistant prostate cancer. Provenge is a unique therapy recruiting the immune system to fight prostate cancer cells in the body. As there are only a few, modestly effective therapies for castrate-resistant metastatic prostate cancer, this is a welcomed addition. Provenge improves the survival time on average in prostate cancer patients by 19%.
Provenge is a unique therapy and quite different from chemotherapy traditionally given for cancers such as prostate cancer. Provenge is an immunotherapy utilizing the patients immune system to fight the cancer. Provenge takes white blood cells from the patient's body and then sensitizes them to cancer cells in the lab, then the sensitized white blood cells are re-infused into the patient and those sensitized white blood cells seek out and suppress prostate cancer cells. Immune therapy has a lot of proponents but often the products or concepts advocated for are based on presumption and/or bad science. Provenge is different in that it has met the criteria of efficacy using the strict scientific method and review by experts in the field as well as the Food and Drug Administration.
The process of receiving this therapy is quite unique as well. Three treatments are required about 2 weeks apart. Each treatment is preceded by a procedure called leukapharesis to remove the white blood cells from the body. This procedure is similar to dialysis in which blood is removed from the body. The cells are then removed from the blood by a machine and the blood is returned to the body. The procedure takes about 3-4 hours. We have contracted with the Puget Sound Blood Center in Seattle to do the procedure for our patients. After the cells are collected they are flown to the company's processing plant in New Jersey to be "sensitized". They are then flown back to Seattle and driven to Wenatchee to be infused approximately 4 days after they are collected in Seattle.
Today we had our Site Inititiation visit from the team from Dendreon Pharmaceutical Corporation. We will be able to begin treatment in the next few weeks. There will be only 50 sites in all the United States that can do this treatment, we will be the only site in Eastern Washington. As a site that actively enrolled patients in the trial leading to the drug's approval, we were selected as one of the first sites in the country to be able to give this treatment to patients. However, due to processing capacity at the lab in New Jersey, at this time we can only treat one patient each month to allow patients from all over the country to have access to this treatment.
I am proud of our research activities that has placed us in such a good position to be the first to bring this exciting new treatment to the patients of North Central Washington.
Best Regards Always,
Mitch G.
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