RIT As Front-Line Therapy
In my last entry, I wrote about the update of Dr. Kaminski's study using Bexxar as front-line therapy. As Mort and I have said, both Zevalin and Bexxar are approved as a second line therapy, and I was not aware of any front line usage outside of clinical trials.
However, on Sunday, June 3, there was an interesting article in the Fort Worth Telegram about a man who, according to the article, is the second person to receive Bexxar as front line therapy outside of a clinical trial. It's a wonderful article and I recommend you read it at: www.star-telegram.com/news/story/123890.html. I chuckled at the beginning of the title: "Weird Science...." and the drug's description as experimental. I suppose in the beginning that anything new and different does seem weird, but RIT has now been studied for 16 years and FDA approved for 5. "Experimental" and "weird" no longer apply.
As for the off label use, many drugs, including many which are commonly used for lymphoma treatment, are used off label, i.e., prescribed for uses other than that for which the FDA has approved them, but RIT has hardly been prescribed for its approved use, much less off label, so I was very surprised and pleased to read this article.
Hats off to the oncologist who was clearly familiar with the impressive data on RIT and who chose to recommend a one week treatment to his patient rather than a prolonged treatment over several months. If we had more doctors like him, many more of us could avoid months of treatments and unpleasant side effects....and potentially achieve longer, more durable remission periods.
But sadly only 5 to 10 percent of patients eligible for RIT are getting it. Here's a link to an article I wrote for our local paper, The Ann Arbor News, which was published on Sunday June 10 and which discusses the reality of RIT's use:
http://www.mlive.com/annarbor/stories/index.ssf?/base/news-0/1181458985115390.xml&coll=2
Betsy