Paul Allen says his cancer is back and expresses his optimism

Paul Allen said the cancer that he had defeated in 2009 was back. This is the third time that the co-founder of Microsoft has been diagnosed with cancer, this time a recurrence of non-Hodgkin's lymphoma (NHL).

On October 1, in a public statement posted on the website of Vulcan Inc., its real estate company, and provided to FortuneAllen noted that new therapies have emerged since his last treatment and that his doctors are optimistic, "like me," Vulcan said.

NHL, a cancer of the white blood cells, remains difficult to treat successfully, even though treatments continue to progress. Immunotherapy is a rapidly emerging – and currently expensive – approach that can eradicate cancers, including lymphomas such as NHL, by driving the body's existing defenses to attack cancer cells aggressively. The Nobel Prize for Medicine was awarded on October 1 to two pioneering immunotherapy researchers, whose work has led to the current growth of these treatment options.

However, many treatments are still undergoing clinical trials and researchers are still unable to determine whether an immunotherapy method will benefit a given patient. Also on October 1, the newspaper Medicine of nature published a report on a rare death resulting directly from this method of treatment.

Allen wrote in a book of 2011, Idea manIn June 1982, he told his Microsoft co-founder, Bill Gates, that he planned to leave the company he had founded in 1975 because of differences in management and ownership. Later that year, he was diagnosed with Hodgkin's lymphoma. Allen has received one of the most extreme cancer treatments available, usually reserved for patients who have exhausted all possibilities. It usually involves massive doses of radiation to kill the malignant cells, followed by a bone marrow transplant. He recovered from this fight and left Microsoft in February 1983, but remained on the board for nearly two decades.

In 2009, Allen was again diagnosed with cancer, non-Hodgkin's lymphoma for which he would have received chemotherapy.

Allen's impact on the Seattle area is profound. With billions of dollars in his pocket, he started buying land in the early 90s in an industrial and mixed-use, exhausted area that at the time was very much north of the center's shops and offices. but bordered a lake to the north. He and other business and community leaders have tried to promote the conversion of tens of acres into a huge urban park, with important private donations being pledged. Voters defeated the effort.

In the early 2000s, his real estate company accelerated the acquisition of properties during the decade and built millions of square feet of office space and research in the area. This decision paid off with the increasing growth of technology in Seattle, while the costs and growth of Silicon Valley were limited. The city center extends north to face the Allen district and Amazon's huge office needs take him to rent many buildings in Vulcan. Microsoft, Google, and other well-established startups and companies occupy tens of millions of new square feet in this area once proposed as a park.

Allen also owns two sports teams: the NBA Portland Trailblazers and the Seattle Seahawks of the NFL. He recently donated $ 30 million to a housing project in Seattle for temporary and permanent housing for homeless and low-income families.