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Assessing radioimmunotherapy
Nationwide, Stanford is a leader in initiating clinical trials of radioimmunotherapy
— a technique that uses a cancer-specific antibody coupled with
a radioactive atom to fight cancers. Most patients who have been treated
with radioimmunotherapy at Stanford suffered from non-Hodgkin’s
B-cell lymphoma. Currently, however, Stanford physicians are also involved
in clinical trials for patients with leukemia and prostate, colorectal
and pancreatic cancers, as well as soft tissue sarcomas.
In addition to tackling different types of cancer, physicians are also
assessing when in the course of the disease to employ radioimmunotherapy.
In the first round of trials on non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma patients,
the treatment was used only when conventional treatments such as chemotherapy
and radiation had failed. Now trials are under way to determine if radioimmunotherapy
treatment also works well when used as a front-line treatment for the
disease. Preliminary results are promising.
Stanford physicians who have been involved in researching and testing
radioimmunotherapy include J. Augusto Bastidas, MD, assistant professor
of surgery; Karl Blume, MD, professor of medicine; Steve Coutre, MD, assistant
professor of medicine; George Fisher, MD, PhD, assistant professor of
medicine; James Ford, MD, assistant professor of medicine; Michael Goris,
MD, PhD, professor of radiology; Sandra Horning, MD, professor of medicine;
Susan Knox, MD, PhD, associate professor of radiation oncology; Ron Levy,
MD, professor of medicine; and Robert Negrin, MD, associate professor
of medicine.
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