Treatments for Leukemias and Multiple Myeloma

Leukemias may be treated with chemotherapy, radiation therapy, surgery to remove the spleen, monoclonal antibody therapy or chemotherapy combined with bone-marrow or stem-cell transplantation.

Monoclonal antibody therapy is a treatment that uses antibodies (types of proteins) produced in a lab to kill cancer cells, block their growth or prevent them from spreading. These antibodies are given by infusion, and they may be used by themselves or as agents to carry drugs, radioactive material or toxins to cancer cells.

Chemotherapy combined with bone-marrow or stem-cell transplantation is used for patients with advanced cancers. The extremely high doses of chemotherapy given destroy bone marrow and then a bone-marrow transplant is given to replace the marrow. Alternately, in a stem-cell transplant, abnormal stem cells are removed from the patient’s blood or marrow, given high-dose chemotherapy and then reinfused into the patient’s bloodstream to grow into healthy blood cells.

Currently, the preferred treatment for patients with multiple myeloma is high-dose chemotherapy followed by transplantation of the patient’s own stem cells following initial treatment with chemotherapy at standard doses to induce a remission.

• Arlen Specter on Being Bald: His Chemotherapy Experience for Lymphoma