Lymphoma Drug Is Effective Over Long Term

Eight years after being treated with a new drug for non-Hodgkin's lymphoma, 86 percent of patients were still alive and half had not had a relapse of their disease.

The patients had follicular lymphoma, a type of cancer that is not considered to be curable using traditional treatments. Even if patients initially respond to treatment, the disease almost always comes back and becomes more difficult to treat.

The study followed 76 patients with follicular non-Hodgkin's lymphoma, a cancer of the lymph system, who received the radioimmunotherapy drug Bexxar as their first treatment for the disease. Ninety-five percent of the patients saw their tumors shrink from the treatment and three-quarters of patients went into complete remission.