Posted on 12/10/2024 2:47:45 PM PST by ConservativeMind
Just days before his fourth birthday, Santiago was diagnosed with B-cell acute lymphoblastic leukemia (B-ALL), the most common cancer in children. He began chemotherapy the next day, and the outlook was promising—disease-free survival rates for B-ALL are among the highest for pediatric cancers, at 80 to 85%. However, limited progress has been made over the last 15 years, and relapsed B-ALL remains a leading cause of cancer death among children.
Santiago's parents enrolled him in a trial, which included over two hundred sites across four countries, combined standard chemotherapy with two cycles of blinatumomab, an immunotherapy already used for children with relapsed B-ALL.
Early study results were so promising that the trial closed early, with findings showing a striking 61% reduction in the risk of B-ALL relapse or death for those who received both chemotherapy and blinatumomab.
Before he joined the trial, Santiago received a combination therapy of steroids and chemotherapy, already personalized based on a genetic analysis of his leukemia cells showing which medications would be most effective for him.
Unlike chemotherapy, immunotherapies like blinatumomab use the body's own immune system to fight cancer by teaching the immune system to target cancer cells. For children like Santiago with an average risk of relapse, the study showed that after three years, the disease-free survival rate increased to 97.5%, compared to 90% with chemotherapy alone. For children with a higher risk of relapse, receiving blinatumomab in addition to chemotherapy increased the disease-free survival rate from 85% to over 94%.
The findings published today included 1,440 children.
"This new combination treatment is set to become the new standard of care for these patients, potentially saving many lives and reducing the fear and health impacts associated with relapse," says Sumit.
(Excerpt) Read more at medicalxpress.com ...
The three year disease-free rate is 97.5% for average risk kids, and 94% for high-risk kids.
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