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Radioimmunotherapy: Safety Measures During Therapy

Summary & Participants

The newest strategy in the fight against cancer is harnessing the power of radiation by linking it to targeted drug therapy. Learn the precautions people must take and how these treatments are safely delivered to people with cancer.

Medically Reviewed On: July 15, 2008

Webcast Transcript

ANNOUNCER: One of the newest developments in the treatment of non-Hodgkin's lymphoma, or NHL, is radioimmunotherapy. At a Gilda's Club gathering in Chicago, this treatment was the main topic of discussion.

JOE BASHAW: In 1995 my wife was diagnosed with non-Hodgkin's low grade lymphoma. I was also diagnosed with the same thing. Any time there's any opportunity to go anywhere to get information about the disease, treatments or what's on the horizon, we always try to go.

ANNOUNCER: Radioimmunotherapy uses drugs called monoclonal antibodies, which are similar to antibodies the immune system makes to fight infection. These antibodies have a radioactive component attached to them, which attacks a protein on the surface of a cancer cell and destroys the cell. Currently, radioimmunotherapy is primarily being used in the fight against NHL.

RUSSEL SCHILDER, MD: The reason radioimmunotherapy has been targeted right now for lymphoma is we have the right target, the CD20 antigen. It's limited to B-cells; lymphocytes and lymphoma cells are very sensitive to radiation therapy. So we've always wondered 'Gee it would be great if we could just radiate a lot of these different sites' but with so many normal tissue structures, if you radiate too much of the body, the toxicity becomes excessive. So this is a way, in fact of radiating the whole body without having to expose the same amount of normal tissue.

ANNOUNCER: Radioimmunotherapy differs from traditional radiation therapy in several ways.

LEO GORDON, MD: Traditional radiation targets a tumor mass, but it leaves totally untreated single cells that might be floating in other areas. And so traditional radiation is a very effect way of treating a localized tumor. But radioimmunotherapy offers an opportunity to deliver radiation to multiple sites in a targeted fashion at we hope, safe doses.

RUSSEL SCHILDER, MD: Most radiotherapy in a traditional way is external beam. You get in front of the linear accelerator and obviously the first thing that has to happen is the radiation has to go through skin and other normal tissues before it hits the target of interest. By getting radioimmunotherapy, the radiation is brought right to the tissue of interest by the antibody that the radioactivity is linked to. The other difference between them is external beam often is Monday through Friday for many weeks. Radioimmunotherapy is one treatment one week, one treatment the next week and with just some images obtained to make sure that the radioactivity is distributing itself properly and then the treatment's over.

ANNOUNCER: The current treatment regimen uses a drug called Zevalin. Zevalin has two components: a monoclonal antibody with radioactive yttrium attached to it. But before a patient is given Zevalin, they first receive its non-radioactive counterpart Rituxan.

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