Chinese doctors have made a breakthrough in treating lung cancer by combining chemotherapy with stem cell transplant.
By doing so the doctors with the Shanghai Chest Hospital have helped about 30 lung cancer sufferers survive longer than those receiving traditional treatment.
Normally, lung cancer patients, especially those in the late stage, can only live on for about a year. Chemotherapy is an effective way to control the tumor, but it reduces the patient's leukocytes, destroying the immune system, as well.
The new method involves doctors extracting hematogenic stem cells from the patient's flood while making the blood go through a blood separation apparatus. After 48 hours of culture in vitro, the stem cells are transplanted back into the patient who has just received chemotherapy, to help the patient rebuild the immune system.
One patient, surnamed Zhu, who was diagnosed as having late lung cancer and the metastasis in his bones, was treated by the new method in 1997 and is still alive now.
(Xinhua 03/20/2001)
