We were excited when our MRF newsletter arrived today! The article that was written is exciting-it is almost as if we are reading about someone else and we are so happy for that patient and his family. WOW, it sounds great--and it is!
Bobby was first diagnosed with melanoma in 2007. At that time, the prognosis was poor and we had few options. Interferon was one option. Interferon is given for one year and it is a year of feeling like crap. The statistics show that Interferon will extend the patient's life by about-one year. One thing that Dr. Sharfman, an oncologist from Hopkins, said to us early in the diagnosis was (regarding Interferon) that even though you lose a year to gain a year, "WHAT IF that is the year that a treatment is found to control melanoma?" Bobby chose to enter a clinical trial with the hope of better results than Interferon could promise. We never lost hope that this might be the year that they find a treatment that works. Ipilimumab was not offered to Bobby in 2007 or 2008, but by 2009 it was at the top of the list as the next drug to be approved to treat melanoma. That was the year we needed. In 2007, we didn't even talk about what we might be doing in 2010.
The FDA was supposed to review and hopefully approve Ipi by the end of this year. We were disappointed to hear that this approval date has been pushed into 2011. This is a pretty good article that talks about Ipi and its future - Ipilimumab The brand name for Ipilimumab will be called Yervoy after FDA approval. I found another article which was interesting: Yervoy
Our hope for 2011 is that it will become that year which so many melanoma patients need.
1 comment:
Wonderful sentiments.
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