The results have been promising. For the first time, patients with the disease have avoided the potentially life-threatening side effects of existing treatment protocols, allowing them to live a more normal life with two daily pills.As Thomas Street relocates, patients and staff reflect on historic HIV center's 'personality'
Dr. Nitin Jain, an associate professor of leukemia at MD Anderson, said Kantarjian has encouraged him to find his own voice on the issue. When Jain approached him several years ago, frustrated that his patient was denied coverage for an important clinical trial, Kantarjian encouraged him to submit an article to local media.
He was given the opportunity as a fourth-year medical student to visit MD Anderson for a few months to observe the work. In Houston, he lived off Burger King whoppers — “they are wonderful” — to stretch his money and picked up bits of English by watching American Football. At the hospital, he sat in on physician meetings and listened to cancer pioneers like Dr.
In the past decade, Kantarjian’s team was the first to introduce a different kind of targeted therapy — monoclonal antibodies — into the treatment regimen for different types of acute lymphocytic leukemia. Again, he saw survival improvements, which triggered another question in his mind: “Can we get rid of chemotherapy altogether?”