Thursday, December 5, 2013

iwCLL 2013: Dr. John Byrd Discusses the Role of Novel Therapies versus Standard Chemo-Immunotherapy

In the first part of my interview from iwCLL 2013 in Cologne, Germany, my doctor for my ibrutinib trial out of Ohio State (OSU) gives us his take on two of the pressing questions facing us patients.

First, what is the going forward role of chemo-immunotherapy?

Remember that FRC offers those with specific favorable markers a 60% chance of a greater than a nine years MRD negative survival. That is beginning to smell like a cure, but at what price?

Based on his experience with over 400 ibruitinb patients, listen to Dr. Byrd's take. He calls upon the experience with imatinib (Gleevec) in CML to illustrate his point. Not every agrees with Dr. Byrd, but I do.

Next I ask about the vexing issue of residual disease with these new agents. Dr. Byrd is not worried. Hear his reasoning.



On a personal note, I am off to a very frantic ASH meeting tomorrow. Expect on the fly updates.

Still sick and miserable, but I am not I will recover.  Coughing less with a normal chest and sinus x-rays More of a head cold now. I also have been hampered by a cracked computer screen and broken eyeglasses, but the show must go on.

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1 Comments:

Anonymous Anonymous said...

Really interesting... Can't wait for more. So MRD is normally an indicator of prognosis... Dr Byrd is saying, perhaps not... the kinase inhibitors may muck up the CLL cells enough to render them harmless, even if in the end they don't kill them.

Sounds possible. I don't know enough about the biology to fully grasp... But CLL cells should be turning over in a years time... I would guess many times over. Doesn't that mean they are active enough to render harm? If they are still hanging around does this help explain some of the cases of resistance... Since the CLL cells are active and in such sufficient numbers while being treated... They have lots opportunity for "learning" how to beat the kinase inhibitor and morphing into resistant version or even Richters? Sorry for the unfavorable hypothesis... Hope to be way off base.

This is such good stuff Brian.

December 5, 2013 at 4:23 PM  

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