For seven days, he received doses of two chemicals through a tube placed in a vein in his upper chest. It was hoped a long-lasting remission of the cancer would occur. It put Stanford in the 10 percent of cases most resistant to treatment. Cells' resistance to toxins is a natural defense tactic. They have a mechanism that literally pumps poisons away.
Chemotherapy is supposed to overwhelm that mechanism.
But in some cancer cells, the mechanism is overactive and the cancer cells defeat the very chemicals specifically designed to destroy them. In early June, Virginia Mason doctors tried another round of chemotherapy with different chemicals. But the cancer cells returned in little more than a month. A small, undetectable store of resistant leukemic cells had not been killed, and they reproduced in force. On Aug. 4, doctors announced that Mr. Stanford would undergo a stem cell transplant, a new variation of a bone marrow transplant.