Lymphoma Research News

Some nice news about lymphoma research:

Both the University of Rochester Med School and the Arizona Cancer Center just received $11.5 million grants to study lymphoma.

The Rochester team is looking at a drug called SGI-498. Researchers have already identified proteins that seem to trigger tumor growth. SGI-498 has shown in trials that it can identify these proteins and disrupt them, stopping the tumor from growing. So far, it's been done in solid tumors. Lymphomas, of course, are not solid tumors, but rogue cells that travel around the bloodstream. This research will look into how SGI-498 can be used on non-solid-tumor cancers. They're working on the theory that lymphomas develop from abnormal stem cells (immature blood cells that haven't grown into mature red or white blood cells yet). This is why stem cell transplants seem to work -- they wipe out all of the old, bad stem cells and replace them with normal ones. Very interesting work to come soon out of Rochester.

The Arizona researchers are working on individualized therapies connected with Rituxin, looking at the growth mechanisms for lymphoma cells and hoping to find ways to turn them off. They're hoping for the same result as the Rochester folks, but goinga different route.

What I like most about the Arizona story is the lead researcher's statement:

Dr. Miller says in some cases it has become difficult to define what a cure is because patients with supposedly incurable types of lymphoma are in remission for many years.
He says "About half the patients are known to have a curable type of lymphoma, and the other half are the types that we know we can treat. And the time that those patients spend in remission is getting so long we may be curing some of them. We just haven't lived long enough to testify to that conclusion."
There's excitement in the air.
We're even hearing a word researchers use very cautiously.
We're actually hearing the word "cure."
Dr. Miller says, "I'm getting close to offering a written guarantee. It's that close."

There's a whole lot of that cautious talk about "cure" in the lymphoma community lately. Very cautious, but there's more talk about switching treatment strategies toward curing rather than just treating. Part of the difficulty is knowing how to define "cure," as the Arizona researcher says. With a slow-growing lymphoma, someone might be treated and not show signs again for 5 years (the standard for many cancers in labeling someone "cured"), while the lymphoma is still there, just not very visible yet. So that involves new ways of measuring its presence -- which might lead to better screening, and thus early detection and better curability.

Anyway, it's all very fascinating -- certainly something I'm keeping my eye on, and that I'd like to talk to Dr. R about.