ALTERNATIVE:The frontline treatment for lymphoma is chemotherapy, but cancer cells become resistant to the treatment, professor Owen A. O’Connor said
Taipei Times
Date: Apr 18, 2016
By: Lee I-chia / Staff reporter
Clinical studies have shown poor prognoses for patients with most subtypes of
Mackay Memorial Hospital consultant hematologist and oncologist Chang Ming-chih, left, and Owen A. O’Connor, professor of medicine and experimental therapeutics and director of the Center for Lymphoid Malignancies at Columbia University Medical Center, are pictured in an undated photograph. Photo: Ruby Chang
peripheral T-cell lymphoma (PTCL), especially for those who have received conventional chemotherapy, as well as high relapse and low overall survival rates, but doctors said a new antifolate could be an effective alternative to traditional treatments.
Chang Ming-chih (張明志), consultant hematologist and oncologist at Mackay Memorial Hospital, said an average of about 330 PTCL cases were reported in Taiwan each year in the past few years and the numbers appear to be growing, adding that there are many different types of PTCL and most of them are aggressive.
Chang said that a study conducted overseas in 2013 showed that the three-year survival rate of PTCL patients after their first relapse was only 18 percent, adding that survival rates can be increased significantly for those who receive hematopoietic stem cell transplantations (HSCT).
However, patients are sometimes too weak to undergo HSCT due to age or the side effects of conventional chemotherapy, or they are unwilling to accept treatment due the to high relapse rate, he said, adding that the average lifespan of PTCL patients after their first relapse or progression is about five-and-a-half months without HSCT. [FULL STORY]
