MEDICINE Double dose hits hard against bone cancer

ASSOCIATED PRESS
An unusually intensive assault on the cancer multiple myeloma -- using two rounds of high-dose chemotherapy followed each time by a stem cell transplant -- appears to double patients' long-term chances of survival, a study found.
Although the approach is not a cure, doctors say the results are encouraging for victims of this usually lethal cancer of the bone marrow.
The researchers found that after seven years, 42 percent of patients who got the double treatment were still alive, compared with 21 percent of those who received the standard single round of chemo plus a transplant.
The head of a U.S. marrow transplant program said the French study is another important development in what has been an exciting year for multiple myeloma research, including federal approval in May of the drug Velcade, which targets one of the underlying defects that make this cancer grow.
If such developments continue, "I'm very optimistic that we will be thinking of this as a curable disease within my professional career," said Dr. Edward Stadtmauer of the University of Pennsylvania's Abramson Cancer Center.
A transplant allows a higher dose of chemotherapy because it puts the patient's stem cells back into the body to replace those killed by the treatment. Stem cells are a crucial component of bone marrow, which produces blood cells.
In addition to increasing life span, the second round of treatment doubled the chance of surviving seven years without a recurrence of cancer (20 percent vs. 10 percent).