
                         Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: THURSDAY, August 12, 1993                   TAG: 9308120233
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL                    PAGE: A-12   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: Associated Press
DATELINE: BOSTON                                LENGTH: Short

NEW TREATMENT FINDS, KILLS CANCER CELLS WITH RADIOACTIVE ANTIBODIES

Radioactive antibodies can hunt down spreading blood cancer and destroy all signs of the disease, providing a potentially powerful new weapon against malignancy, researchers report.

The idea of arming disease-seeking antibodies with bits of poison or radioactive material has been around for years. Until now, though, efforts to use the technology against cancer have been disappointing.

However, in a report published in today's New England Journal of Medicine, doctors describe unusually impressive results of a new attempt to harness this approach.

They conducted a preliminary study on nine lymphoma patients who had failed to respond to chemotherapy. The test was intended only to see if the treatment was safe.

But to the doctors' surprise, the cancer vanished in four of them. Two remain apparently cancer-free after more than a year.

"This is a lot better than we would ever have hoped for," said Dr. Mark Kaminski of the University of Michigan. "Patients [are] going into complete remission. One patient had a pound of tumor in his abdomen, and it shrank away to nothing with minimal side effects."

The researchers used the new therapy to treat cancer of the B cells, a variety of white blood cells that manufacture disease-fighting antibodies. Kaminski said about 32,000 new cases are diagnosed in the United States annually.

by CNB