Actor Sam Neil must take chemotherapy rest of life to ward off recurrence of lymphoma

After fighting it for months, actor Sam Neill, star of Jurassic Park movie franchise, has finally revealed that he has been diagnosed with blood cancer.

Sam Neill

According to a recent story by Lee Moran on the HuffPost website, Neill says he's being treated but is in remission. There's now "no cancer in my body," he's quoted as saying. 

He will, however, need chemotherapy treatment each month for the rest of his life, he admitted to the Guardian in an interview.

Moran's piece says the 75-year-old was diagnosed with angioimmunoblastic T-cell lymphoma "after experiencing swollen glands while promoting Jurassic World Dominion last year."

His revelations most likely came because his memoir — Did I Ever Tell You This? — was just released.. Writing it, the HuffPost story quotes him, "was a lifesaver" that gave him "a reason to live."'

Neill is back to work, with his next television appearance scheduled for Apples Never Fail, a limited upcoming Peacock series co-starring Annette Bening.

More information about treatments and disease can be found in Rollercoaster: How a man can survive his partner's breast cancer, a VitalityPress book that I, Woody Weingarten, aimed at male caregivers.

$373,000 per regimen for new treatment

FDA gives its okay to a second gene therapy that can send blood cancer into remission

The FDA has approved a new gene therapy for adults with aggressive non-Hodgkin's lymphoma.

According to a recent story by Denise Grady in The New York Times, Yescarta was okayed for patients who've undergone two regimens of chemotherapy that failed.

The Times article notes that the therapy "is part of the rapidly growing field of immunotherapy, which uses drugs or genetic tinkering to turbocharge the immune system to fight disease. In some cases the treatments have led to long remissions."

The therapy, which turns cells into "living drugs," is made by Kite Pharma.

Approval by the Federal Drug Administration was its "second in a radically new class of treatments that genetically reboot a patient's own immune cells to kill cancer."

The first was Kymriah, made by Novartis. It was okayed in August "for children and young adults with an aggressive type of acute leukemia."

That one costs $475,000 per dose, although the company has said "it will not charge patients who do not respond within the first month after treatment."

Yescarta isn't quite as expensive — $373,000 per treatment.

Dr. Frederick L. Locke

Dr. Frederick L. Locke, a leader of a study of Yescarta (and a specialist at the Moffitt Cancer Center in Tampa in blood cancers), is quoted as saying, "We're excited. We think there are many patients who may need this therapy."

Grady's story says "about 3,500 people a year in the United States may be candidates for Yescarta," which is intended "to be given once, infused into a vein, and must be manufactured individually for each patient."

Side effects, as with many therapies, can be daunting.

Life-threatening issues that stem from the Yescarta treatment can include "high fevers, crashing blood pressure, lung congestion and neurological problems," the story indicates.

According to Grady, two patients in the study that led to the drug's approval, "died from side effects," although doctors — through training and experience — apparently "have learned to manage them better."

The study, which was conducted at the Dana-Farber Cancer institute and Brigham and Women's Cancer Center in Boston, involved 111 patients at 22 hospitals.

"Initially," Grady's piece delineates, "54 percent [of the 101 who received Yescarta] had complete remissions…Another 28 percent had partial remissions [and] after six months, 80 percent…were still alive. With a median follow-up of 8.7 months, 39 percent of the 101 were still in complete remission — a much higher rate that achieved with earlier treatments — and 5 percent still had partial remissions."

Dr. Caron A. Jacobson

Says Dr. Caron A. Jacobson, who helped do the study: "You're really seeing people get their life back. After a couple weeks in the hospital and a couple weeks at home, they go back to work. On its face, it's quite remarkable and revolutionary."

The treatment, the Times explains, "was originally developed at the National Cancer Institute, by a team Dr. Steven Rosenberg led. The institute entered an agreement with Kite in 2012, in which the company helped pay for research and received rights to commercialize the results."

The drug giant Gilead reportedly bought Kite two months ago for $11.9 billion.

"In just several decades, said Dr. Scott Gottlieb, the FDA commissioner, "gene therapy has gone from being a promising concept to a practical solution to deadly and largely untreatable forms of cancer."

A look at many treatments and clinical trials can be found in "Rollercoaster: How a man can survive his partner's breast cancer," a VitalityPress book I, Woody Weingarten, aimed at caregivers.

Cell experiment shows 'extraordinary' promise

Can new gene therapy change patient's own blood into a cancer killer? Quite possibly

Turning your own blood into cancer killers may now be possible.

According to a new study reported recently by the Associated Press, more than a third of very sick lymphoma patients showed no sign of the blood cancer six months after a single treatment of an experimental gene therapy.

Findings of the study, the story by Marilynn Marchione indicated, were made by the treatment's maker, California-based Kite Pharma, which purportedly "is racing Novartis AG to become the first to win approval of the treatment, called CAR-T cell therapy," in the United States.

The treatment could become the nation's first approved gene therapy, the AP article indicated.

Side effects appear to be manageable.

There are risks involved, of course. "Three of the 101 patients in the study died of causes unrelated to worsening of their cancer," the story said, "and two of those deaths were deemed due to the treatment," which was developed at the National Cancer Institute and licensed to Kite.

Dr. Roy Herbst

One independent expert, Dr. Roy Herbst, cancer medicines chief at the Yale Cancer Center, was quoted as calling the results "extraordinary" and "extremely encouraging."

He suggested, though, that follow-up studies were needed to make sure the benefit doesn't wane over a longer period of time.

New research and treatments are an integral part of "Rollercoaster: How a man can survive his partner's breast cancer," a VitalityPress book I, Woody Weingarten, aimed at male caregivers.

Total remissions stem from patients' T-cells

'Serial killers' on the loose — how cell therapy is now being used to attack blood cancer

An evolving technique called cell therapy can make cancer disappear.

Total remissions already have occurred in "some patients who were out of treatment options," according to a recent story by Andrew Pollack in The New York Times that I just found on the Honolulu Star-Advertiser website.

How does the technique work?

Pollack's piece reports that a "patient's T-cells, the solders of the immune system, are extracted from the patient's blood, then genetically engineered to recognize and destroy cancer." 

And then "the redesigned cells are multiplied in the laboratory, and millions or billions of them are put back into the patient's bloodstream, set loose like a vast army of tumor assassins."

Dr. Carl H. June

Dr. Carl H. June of the University of Pennsylvania, one of the top three researchers studying cell therapy, calls the cells "serial killers." 

He also is quoted as saying the individualized technique "works better than nature made it."

One killer cell apparently can destroy up to 100,000 cancer cells.

Only hundreds — not thousands — of patients have been treated with cell therapy so far, however, mainly because "it works only for certain types of blood cancers, not common malignancies like breast and lung cancer," Pollack writes.

Another problem is potentially lethal brain-swelling as a side effect.

Details about immunology and other experimental techniques can be found in "Rollercoaster: How a man can survive his partner's breast cancer," a VitalityPress book I, Woody Weingarten, aimed at male caregivers.