I want a new drug...
Okay, maybe not yet, but it looks like there are lots of new potential candidates for treating HCL that still have yet to be explored. Two posts ago, I mentioned a new third-generation antibody that has the potential of being 5 to 100 times more powerful than Rituxan but hasn't been used to treat HCL yet. I'm hoping some preliminary in-vitro studies will be conducted soon.
Today, I found another one -- a Btk (Bruton's tyrosine kinase) Inhibitor, PCI-32765, that is currently in Phase I clinical trials in patients with B cell malignancies (specifically Non-Hodgkin's Lymphoma). Btk is an essential signalling factor needed for the development of B-cells. By inhibiting it, the Btk protein production is blocked and B-cells can't develop. The inspiration for developing the drug was born from a disease, XLA, in which B-cells are absent from the peripheral blood because Btk is not produced due to a Btk gene defect.
What's great about this drug is that it's a pill, taken orally, that inhibits Btk production and thus B-cell production. Since HCL is a B-cell malignancy, I've asked the Hairy Cell Consortium if they are familiar with the drug and whether it may be a candidate for a Phase 1 trial to treat relapsed and refractory HCL patients. I'll let you know if they respond.
"This is a very selective compound for B-cells, and it could represent an important alternative to rituximab therapy for the treatment of B-cell NHL. Other obvious applications include autoimmune disorders such as rheumatoid arthritis and lupus, and Pharmacyclics also has strong preclinical efficacy with PCI-32765 in these disease models," said Dr. Mark Genovese, Professor of Medicine and Co-Chief of the Division of Immunology and Rheumatology at Stanford University Medical Center and member of Pharmacyclics' Scientific Advisory Board. [Taken from Pharmacyclics Press Release dated April 13, 2009]
Wouldn't it be great if we HCL'ers could knock out minimal residual disease (MRD) and then take a pill as maintenance therapy so that we'd never have to worry about it ever coming back? Even better if it could act as the first-line therapy someday and eliminate the need for chemotherapy altogether (and side-effects like increased secondary cancer risk and impact to T-cell counts), or provide a new treatment alternative for patients with HCL-V (the variant form of HCL that doesn't respond as well to Cladribine).
Okay, maybe not yet, but it looks like there are lots of new potential candidates for treating HCL that still have yet to be explored. Two posts ago, I mentioned a new third-generation antibody that has the potential of being 5 to 100 times more powerful than Rituxan but hasn't been used to treat HCL yet. I'm hoping some preliminary in-vitro studies will be conducted soon.
Today, I found another one -- a Btk (Bruton's tyrosine kinase) Inhibitor, PCI-32765, that is currently in Phase I clinical trials in patients with B cell malignancies (specifically Non-Hodgkin's Lymphoma). Btk is an essential signalling factor needed for the development of B-cells. By inhibiting it, the Btk protein production is blocked and B-cells can't develop. The inspiration for developing the drug was born from a disease, XLA, in which B-cells are absent from the peripheral blood because Btk is not produced due to a Btk gene defect.
What's great about this drug is that it's a pill, taken orally, that inhibits Btk production and thus B-cell production. Since HCL is a B-cell malignancy, I've asked the Hairy Cell Consortium if they are familiar with the drug and whether it may be a candidate for a Phase 1 trial to treat relapsed and refractory HCL patients. I'll let you know if they respond.
"This is a very selective compound for B-cells, and it could represent an important alternative to rituximab therapy for the treatment of B-cell NHL. Other obvious applications include autoimmune disorders such as rheumatoid arthritis and lupus, and Pharmacyclics also has strong preclinical efficacy with PCI-32765 in these disease models," said Dr. Mark Genovese, Professor of Medicine and Co-Chief of the Division of Immunology and Rheumatology at Stanford University Medical Center and member of Pharmacyclics' Scientific Advisory Board. [Taken from Pharmacyclics Press Release dated April 13, 2009]
Wouldn't it be great if we HCL'ers could knock out minimal residual disease (MRD) and then take a pill as maintenance therapy so that we'd never have to worry about it ever coming back? Even better if it could act as the first-line therapy someday and eliminate the need for chemotherapy altogether (and side-effects like increased secondary cancer risk and impact to T-cell counts), or provide a new treatment alternative for patients with HCL-V (the variant form of HCL that doesn't respond as well to Cladribine).
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