Posted 1/16/2023 3:00 PM (GMT 0)
Jaw,
A complete Provenge treatment is administered over a period of five weeks. The provenge treatment consists of three rounds of leukapheresis and three infusions. In my case, I went in on a Tuesday to have my white cells extracted. They take around 60 billion of your white cells and also a bag of plasma. Your white cells are flown directly to one of two labs in the United States. There is a lab at seal Beach California and there is a lab at Union City Georgia. At the lab your white cells are washed and separated. They are looking for a particular size of white cell. These are referred to as Dendreonic cells. Once they have the required amount of Dendreonic cells those cells are then exposed to an antigen. Inside the constraints of the body your body‘s immune system would kill the antigen but outside of the body exposure to this antigen causes the Dendreonic cells to activate and then proliferate . These cells are infused into your body 4 days later. It basically turns your body into a cancer killing machine. A complete Provenge treatment is three rounds of this procedure. Some people were eligible for a booster back in the day. Sadly I was not. Provenge gave me 16 side effect free, progression free months before I was forced to go on Zytiga in the fall of 2014. I am still here. I had the time of my diagnosis back in 2006 I had a PSA of over 3200 and Widespread metastasis to the bones lungs and lymph nodes. My original prognosis was a year or less. I will be celebrating 17 years in June. I’m very happy I did Provenge and it was a pleasure to meet the people who manufactured the therapy. I remain good friends with many of them to this day. Of course Dendreon was sold to a Canadian company and then acquired by a Chinese company and many of those people that I know no longer work for Dendreon but man talk about a wonderful group of people.