Report From Chang

Vonda called the nurse in San Francisco and asked for a copy of the report and the protocol to be faxed. The report states that "she tolerated her treatments extremely well and apart from some mild fatigue and alopecia, she does not have any major symptoms at this time". In case you are wondering, the medical term of "alopecia" means loss of hair, feathers or wool. So I guess since Kyla has not grown feathers or wool that I am aware of, it must mean hair. Basically she said that the tumor board reviewed the case and did determine from the MR spectroscopy that there is residual tumor. The recommendation is to either do nothing which is a no brainer (no pun intended), use either standard or experimental chemotherapy which is known not to work or possibly participate in a clinical trial looking at infusion of a toxin of IL-13 with Psuedomonas exotoxin combination.

I am no medical professional but I will do my best to explain what the protocol says. This new drug is called IL 13-PE38QQR (interleukin-13-Pseudomonas exotoxin). Basically it is "cytokine" which is a protein normally produced by cells of the immune system. This IL-13 "cytokine" which has been created using genetic laboratory techniques, will attach itself to special sites called "receptors" which are on the surface of cancer cells in the brain. In a person with a glioma brain tumor, there are high numbers of these receptors present. Normal cells in the brain do not usually produce these receptors. After the protein binds to the receptors on the tumor cells, the entire Pseudomonas fusion protein is taken inside the cancer cell and the toxin molecule becomes active and then kills the cancer cells by destroying the protein production of the cell. The brain cancer cells are killed because the malignant brain tumor cells, but not normal brain cells or immune cells, express high levels of the receptors for the binding. So normal cells should be left alone.

It involves doing a biopsy and testing the tissue to see if tumor cells are present. If the cells are not malignant then she won't be able to participate. If they are malignant, they will insert a catheter and inject the drug for two days. Then she has to wait one week for surgery to remove the hopefully dead tumor tissue. After surgery they will inject the drug into the cavity where the tumor was for 4 days to hopefully deal wth any residual tumor microscopic cells.

Ok, enough of that for today! Makes you want to get a medical degree huh?