Saturday, April 17, 2010

Cool Research

I don't have a link for a full article, but this description of the research is called, straightforwardly, "Compound that Kills Lymphoma Cells Discovered," seems very promising.

Researchers have discovered a compound that disrupts the connection that causes certain lymphoma cells to grow. They don't name the type of lymphoma, but I'm guessing it's Diffuse Large B Cell (DLBCL), an aggressive type. I could probably research the protein that they mention to find out for sure, but it's good news even if it isn't about Follicular NHL specifically. All of this research opens up new avenues, given the kind of targeted therapy that this involves.

It's a short article, but there's good stuff in there. I like that they describe the process, looking at so many compounds and then narrowing it down to just a few that showed promise.

Of course, this is all pre-clinical-trial research that hasn't left the lab yet, so it will be years before we even know if it's effective. Seems safe, according to the researchers -- they claim it's non-toxic, which is great.

Certainly something to keep an eye on.

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I see Dr. R on Monday for a six-week, post-treatment check up. I feel pretty good, so I'm not anticipating any bad news (though, of course, you never know). The nodes that had been active, that were close enough to the surface for me to feel, haven't gotten any bigger since the Rituxan shrank them. And I haven't felt any new ones pop up anywhere. The tricky part will be the deeper ones that I can't feel, though I haven't felt any pressure anywhere in my abdomen to indicate that they are causing trouble again.

I will update you all late Monday or early Tuesday.

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