More on the DVax-Brain vaccine saga in a moment, but put shortly my slot is set to start in the first week of January which for a
Glioblastoma Multiforme patient is an eternity from my surgery date of 10/15/08. Therefore, I can’t stand around for that long and leave this untreated for that long. There are people with GBMs that die in 3 months if they don’t treat these tumors quickly! We had to wait 4 weeks which is standard but we are coming up on 8 weeks past that period.
So, I have started using Avastin and had my first infusion on Tuesday and I will receive an infusion every 2 weeks. It’s an IV-based therapy that was first approved in 2004 for metastic cancers (cancers that have spread to other parts of the body). Colon cancer and non-small cell lung cancer were the first followed by breast cancer in 2008.
Avastin has shown to be very effective in treating GBMs. Put simply, it works by inhibiting tumor growth by blocking the formation of new blood vessels (angiogenesis) and was the first clinically available angiogenesis inhibitor in the United States.
Updated: Here is a great article that ran in the Wall Street Journal about Avastin. The same article appeared on Virtual Trials as an embedded article on their site. What is amazing is that last night I received an email from the editor of the Wall Street Journal health blog telling me to take down the article as an embedded article, that I am reproducing their site in my site and it’s not allowed. Placing a link is fine but putting the site in an iframe, in spite of the fact that all of their advertisement, links and authorship credits (i.e. I’m not stealing anything) and anything else they place on the site are all in tact is not OK with them. This is all going on while VirtualTrials.com has conducted the same practice via the link above since 11/5/08. I posted this yesterday and received an email the same day asking that I pull it down. Such is the ins and outs of the legal world but it was very surprising – I’m a fairly small concern here!
Here are links to both articles on the Wall Street Journal site:
Genetech Seeks FDA Nod For Avastin For Brain Cancer
Targeted Drugs Take a Crack At Brain Cancer
My insurance company has been terrific. I have not received a single denial of coverage. Avastin is $10K+ per infusion and I will receive one every 2 weeks. Since the first infusion on Wednesday, I have had ZERO side effects which is great. I went back to work on Tuesday as you know and had a normal day on Thursday and Friday so I’m thrilled.
When the vaccine is available, we can take advantage or if I am really responding well to Avastin, we can add another agent on top of Avastin and use cryogenics to preserve the vaccine and implement later. The issue with the vaccine (the current issue – new issue, whatever you want to call it) is we didn’t know we needed a “slot” with the lab. Apparently we do which, as I said, is January. It’s really turned into a learn/become informed as we go situation which is unfortunate when your life is on the line. So, we have to go on to other solutions for now.
That’s it for now. We celebrate Christmas so the tree is in our house. Our good friend Tom and his wife came by and he was kind enough to climb the pull-down attic ladder and retrieve our bins of decorations so we should have everything up pretty soon! The Holidays will be great and we are really looking forward to them.
More soon…
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Just a real quick post – and I can’t believe I didn’t post this when it happened! If you didn’t know about it, the National Brain Tumor Foundation, an organization that I volunteer through to assist other newly diagnosed brain tumor survivors who are in need of support, merged with the Brain Tumor Society, another first class organization. The two organizations combined bring together the best of research and patient services to be a comprehensive resource for patients, families, caregivers, researchers, and medical professionals. This merge was completed several months ago and the you can access their web site by visiting braintumor.org.
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