LRF video on Follicular NHL

As promised a few days ago, here's another link for one of the excellent videos from the Lymphoma Research Foundation, this one on the extremely relevent topic of Follicular NHL.

These videos come from the LRF's annual Forum, with presentations on basic lymphoma information for patients and their families. I usually learn a lot from these videos, and not just about the more recent research on treatments.

This video is like the others I've watched, in that it includes some basic information that I probably don't need to know, but which was new to me, and which I found fascinating.

Particularly in the early parts of the presentation, the speaker (Dr. Stephen Schuster from UPenn) talks a lot about the lymph system, lymph nodes, and how fNHL develops. I never really knew the difference between leukemias and lymphomas, though I knew both were blood cancers. Leukemias, I have learned, develop from immature lymph cells, while lymphomas develop from mature lymph cells. Fascinating. Not anything that I need to know to live my life, but it helps with the Big Picture.

I also thought it was interesting that the speaker said there is initial sensitivity to treatment in fNHL, but that the disease also frequently recurs (which is pretty basic information about fNHL). But, he says, it's up to the doctor to figure out which treatment works best for each individual patient. That, of course, is at the core of "personalized medicine." Not every treatment will work for every patient; thankfully, we have lots of options to try.

Speaking of treatments -- there's a very nice and very extensive section of the presentation on treatments, with an emphasis on some of the newer treatments being developed.

Rituxin has lots of competition, apparently; I liked his line, "There are more monoclonal antibodies than Ford has car models." It's important research, this exploration of different antibodies, given the success of Rituxin. But from what I can tell, none of them on their own seem to be any more or less effective than Riruxin. It will be interesting to see how they do in combination, or maybe as serial treatments (use Rituxin, which targets CD-20 proteins on the cancer cell, until it stops working, then try a CD-22 or CD-80 targeted antibody).

I learned something about Fludarabine, too -- that it's hard on the immune system, especially with older patients whose systems don't recover as easily. That's important to me because Dr. R (like many doctors, especially at M.D. Anderson in Texas) are big fans of the treatment. The speaker, though, is involved with some research with T cells that is relevent to Fludarabine. These researchers remove and freeze them before chemo, and then reintroduce them after chemo to re-start the immune system. (Almost sounds like a mini-mini-stem cell transplant.)That could help take away one of the big downsides of Fludarabine. He says his research suggests a series of treatments might work: Fludarabine, then T cell reintroduction, then vaccines to keep the immune system jumping.

It's another very good presentation, especially in some of the little details. A great introduction to (or refresher course in) Follicular NHL.

I may highlight a couple more of those LRF videos soon....