Help Kike get treatment for lymphoma

Hi, my name is Vance and I'm fundraising on behalf of my 28yr old brother-in-law, Augusto (aka Kike), for a badly needed treatment for aggressive lymphoma. In February 2021, during a visit at the national hospital in Panama, he was diagnosed with advanced stage, classic Hodgkin's Lymphoma with nodular sclerosis (4B-IPS2).

Normally, standard (chemotherapy-based) treatment for this kind of cancer is highly effective and most people with the condition are cured after first-line chemotherapy called ABVD, even in advanced stages of the disease. However, a small percentage of people do not respond to chemotherapy and Kike appears to be one of them. Since June, Kike has been through several different high-dose chemotherapy regimens and nothing has stopped his lymphoma from growing.

In early September his doctors called for immediate immunotherapy using a new drug called brentuximab vedotin which was developed specifically to target the malignant cells present in Hodgkin's lymphoma and has shown to be extremely effective in cases where chemotherapy is ineffective. Because he is young and otherwise healthy, doctors say he is a prime candidate for stem cell transplant following immunotherapy, potentially resulting in a complete cure from his lymphoma. However, they need to successfully treat the lymphoma before the transplant, and they believe brentuximab vedotin is the answer.

So that’s the good news – Kike can easily be cured, the bad news is that because brentuximab vedotin is a novel therapy, it is not readily available in many countries including Panama, and when it is available it is extremely expensive. The average cost in the United States is $30,000 per "cycle” whereas in Panama the best quote we obtained was $33,000 per cycle! Kike needs at least 4 cycles (one cycle every 21 days) before getting the stem cell transplant. Fortunately, there is a lab that manufactures brentuximab vedotin with a per-cycle cost of approximately $13,000. Kike contacted a doctor in Mexico who can oversee the treatment as soon as the effects of his last chemotherapy wear off (beginning of October), and we have scheduled an appointment to get the first cycle of brentuximab vedotin on October 8th. Using our savings we have enough money to start the first cycle and we’ve applied for governmental assistance treatment he urgently needs, but it won’t be enough. They say that many hands make light work, please, please donate something and give Kike the gift of continuing to study for his bar exam.

Vance