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| Steven E. Lipshultz, M.D., chair of pediatrics and associate executive dean for child health, designed a new treatment regimen that eases the path for young cancer patients.
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A Miller School professor is among the esteemed authors of a groundbreaking study showing that a newly developed treatment regimen can significantly reduce the long-term toxic effects of chemotherapy for young people with Hodgkin’s disease.
Steven E. Lipshultz, M.D., chair of pediatrics and associate executive dean for child health who is internationally known for his research on the late effects of treatments for childhood cancer, collaborated with physicians and scientists of the National Cancer Institute’s Children’s Oncology Group (COG).
The treatment, a novel chemotherapy known as ABVE-PC, is formulated by combining six drugs into one “dose-dense” regimen. The researchers also combined the chemotherapy treatment with low dose radiation following the ABVE-PC cycles.
The study results, published in the online edition of Blood, the journal of the American Society of Hematology, show a five-year event-free survival in 84 percent and an overall survival in 95 percent in the new dose-dense, early-response treatment.
“The new paradigm for success in treating children with cancer will be measured by achieving the greatest oncologic efficacy while minimizing toxicity and late effects of cancer and its therapies,” says Lipshultz. “Being able to tailor therapy to each patient to achieve the highest quality of life related to this balance is our new goal with childhood cancer therapy.”
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