Wedesday, January 10, 2007 - 1:50 p.m.

Shaylor saw the transplant doctor, Dr. Daniel Couriel, on Monday.  He has confirmed that the typing kits for Leland and JD have been received, and will take 3-5 weeks to process.  the length of time required will depend on if there is a "preliminary" match.

Dr. Couriel did advise that the allogeneic (donor, not self) bone marrow transplant will be required to achieve a 50% success rate for cure.  Shaylor will continue the chemo treatments until a donor is located.  If neither of the brothers match, then they will begin search for an unrelated donor.  Once a donor is located, he will be evaluated for proper response to the chemo.  When the disease has responded appropriately to chemo, he will begin the BMT process.

Diagnosis and Treatment

Shaylor’s diagnosis as confirmed by MD Anderson and Baylor Medical-Dallas is acute lymphoblastic lymphoma.  This is a rare form of lymphoma which tends to mimic leukemia.  As MDA and Baylor both diagnosed the same disease, the trip to Nebraska was not required.

The treatment protocol, as currently prescribed, is Augmented Hyper CVAD chemotherapy which is a series of 8 chemotherapy treatments given over 6 to 8 months followed by monthly maintenance chemo for one year.   Each treatment is a 3 week process.  There are two combinations of drugs used for this therapy.  Treatments 1, 3, 5 and 7 will be the same and 2, 4, 6, and 8 will be the same, but with different drugs than that used in the odd number treatments.

Treatments 1 and 2 require intra-thecal infusions into the spinal fluid on two different days for a total of 4 infusions.

In addition, he will continue to pursue a bone marrow transplant (BMT) parallel with the chemotherapy treatment.  Leland and JD have sent in their blood samples for matching, but we do not yet have results.  If neither of them is a match, then we will begin the search for a matched, unrelated donor.  We don’t yet have a definitive answer regarding the need and projected cure factor of the BMT.