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Show Scientists Report On New Form Of Cancer Treatment Physicians from the National Cancer Institute, Bethesda, Md.. described recently their past five years' experience with chemical treatment of a highly malignant form of cancer which develops in the womb of pregnant women. They reported before the Association As-sociation for Cancer Research at Atlantic City that 30 of 63 treated treat-ed patients with this type of tumor, called choriocarcinoma, are now free of evidence of disease. dis-ease. Several of them have had no indication of recurrence for up to five years since the treatment treat-ment was completed. In all of thes patients the tumor spread outside the uterus into other parts of the body, most frequently frequent-ly the lungs. Treatment in all cases consisted consist-ed of intensive courses of a folic acid antagonist called Methotrexate. Methotre-xate. In fourteen women treatment treat-ment also included brief courses of a recently developed plant derivative de-rivative called vincaleuklobas-tine. vincaleuklobas-tine. These medications have very severe side effects, but doctors described their methods for insuring in-suring the complete recovery of their patients from such undesirable unde-sirable and somewhat hazardous effects. Complete return to good health for periods of five years following chemotheraphy for a malignant tumor has not been previously observed. This unique response of this rare form of cancer may be due to the fact it originates from the baby's cells and can therefore be more easily expelled from the mother's body. This sometimes happens without reatment in the early stages of the disease but only extremely rarely after the tumor has spread. |